The Name Brand Rumored To Be Behind Walmart's Great Value Pancake Mixes

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Many major companies secretly provide your favorite stores with goods that get sold as store-brand items. This is called white labeling, and it makes products cheaper without sacrificing quality. Take Walmart: Apparently, one of many big names hiding behind Great Value products is The Krusteaz Company, which is thought to be the maker of the chain's popular pancake mix.

If you've prepared cake, cornbread, or muffins at home before, you may have used a Krusteaz mix. But pancakes are the brand's true claim to fame, specifically the buttermilk variety. The company's association with Walmart may have become more common knowledge in March 2022. At the time, The Krusteaz Company (then known as Continental Mills) recalled one lot of Great Value Buttermilk Pancake & Waffle Mix due to suspected contamination.

With respect to Krusteaz multiple outlets, including Mashed, have sung the pancake mix's praises for its accessibility, fluffy texture, solid flavor, and fair price (though cost varies by location). But you can theoretically get nearly identical quality for less with the Great Value version. When comparing the ingredients of Krusteaz light and fluffy buttermilk complete pancake mix and the Walmart equivalent, the main differences are the addition of "natural flavor" in the latter and modified food starch in the former. Dextrose and salt are also listed higher on the Krusteaz label than Walmart's. Moreover, Krusteaz's lists "buttermilk" among its contents, while Great Value's label lists "buttermilk powder." Other than that, their components and nutrition facts are very similar.

A company selling white-label items saves money because it doesn't need to pay to manufacture or market the goods. The practice also saves time, since the retailer doesn't need to develop a product before bringing it to market. This leads to lower costs for shoppers, too, because they don't have to pay for the extra bells and whistles that come with producing name-brand items.

The past (and possibly present) connection between Krusteaz and Walmart's Great Value pancake mix arguably illustrates the efficacy of white labeling. Krusteaz has been making pancake mix since the 1940s, so it's safe to say the company knows a thing or two about how to produce it well. Walmart's use of white labeling extends beyond pancake mix, too. If you do some digging, you'll find that items like chicken nuggets, peanut butter, baked goods, and almond milk are or have been manufactured by Perdue Farms, Conagra, The J.M. Smucker Co., and Danone, respectively. 

Walmart is far from the only major chain cashing in on the cost-effective practice. For instance, Costco carries Starbucks coffee, Green Mountain coffee, and Ocean Spray cranberry juice under the Kirkland label. Trader Joe's organic super sweet corn has been sourced from Conagra before, and it's rumored that Bimbo Bakeries USA is or was behind select Aldi breads, like the Fit & Active 45 calorie multigrain variety. The TLDR? Your favorite store-brand foods may not be generic at all, and that's a delicious deal for everyone.