This $4 Grocery Brand Ice Cream Puts Häagen Dazs To Shame

Picking out an ice cream flavor at the grocery store can be an overwhelming experience. There are so many rows, brands, and flavors to choose from. Some might say that the best idea is to gravitate toward the expensive brands, figuring high cost means high quality, but this isn't necessarily the case. We found that even though Häagen Dazs is a premium, delicious, and surprisingly American brand of ice cream (if not a bit pricey), one Kroger dupe put it to shame: Private Selection ice cream.

There is no competition when it comes to price. Kroger sells 14-ounce containers of Häagen-Dazs ice cream for at least $6 in some locations. Meanwhile, its Private Selection line of ice cream is priced at $3.99 for 16 ounces of product. Though Häagen-Dazs does appear to have fewer than Private Selection, the latter is still made with quality ingredients. In addition, Kroger's gourmet house brand has a huge range of flavors that Häagen-Dazs doesn't, like Maine Blueberry Waffle Cone, Pistachio Honey, and Amaretto Cherry Cordial.

It might surprise some people to know that many grocery store private labels are actually made by other large, well-known brands. For example, Kroger's name-brand cereal comes from Kellogg's and General Mills, and its house-brand laundry detergent is made by Sun Products Corporation and Church & Dwight. But as for its ice cream, Kroger keeps it in-house. In fact, almost half of its over 14,000 in-house items are made by Kroger itself.

The corporation operates 38 food manufacturing facilities (19 of which produce dairy products), including a factory in Springdale, Ohio, that produces almost 80 different flavors of ice cream. The decision to do this is simple: It saves costs, which means lower prices for customers and better control over production decisions, as opposed to contracting these items out. That means incredible, rotating, and seasonal ice cream flavors at much better prices compared to other brands. In addition, Kroger's Private Selection ice cream is actually ice cream by USDA standards; check out some other big brands the next time you shop, and you might notice that they are described as "frozen dairy desserts," which most likely means there's not enough milkfat in them to legally be deemed as real ice cream. Even many fast food chains' sweet dairy desserts don't contain the real stuff.