100 Iconic Brands That Changed Grocery

Truly powerful brands often become household names, standing on their own when spoken, without further description needed. Nowhere is this truer than in the grocery industry. It’s the reason that you ask for a Kleenex when you sneeze, or look for a Ziploc bag to store something in — or, down South, request a Coke although you’re mainly just craving a sweetened carbonated beverage.

Where would the grocery industry be without such amazing, resilient brands? These are the names that so often inspire consumers to visit their local supermarkets and make them feel at home when they get there. Iconic grocery brands have also served as the source for decades of powerful TV ads, in-store promotions and circulars, fun jingles playing over store speakers, and, by today’s measure, trendsetting content in TikTok and YouTube videos.

For Progressive Grocer’s premier list of 100 Brands That Changed Grocery, the editors strove to include the best-known brands over the past 100 years, along with newer names that have made significant impacts on the industry. Two names — Starbucks and White Castle — represent notable crossovers from the restaurant industry. You’ll also see a few brands that are really used by grocers themselves but have become familiar to shoppers — such as NCR — as well as one brand that has been so impactful on the industry that we felt we had to include it: Amazon.

As we perused past issues of the magazine to compose this list, it was fascinating to see how brands have changed their messaging and feel over time. Back in a 1922 issue of PG, for example, Borden was billing itself as “the nation’s milk” and “the grocer’s milk,” while Morton Salt saw its branded commodity as not only a “necessity,” but also as a “sure profit item” at 5 cents per package. In 1932, toward the end of Prohibition, Anheuser-Busch was launching a new campaign for Budweiser Barley Malt Syrup, a baking ingredient for bread and cookies that also conveniently lent itself to home brewing. The company planned to include streetcar advertising, newspaper ads in “English and foreign language[s],” and “neon spectacular bulletins at strategic points east and west” in its broad-reaching national campaign. In the 1970s, Campbell Soup was debuting its “Light Ones” line to appeal to more diet-conscious consumers as the Kool-Aid Man was crashing through walls to reward kids with plenty of sugar.

In more recent years, newer brands such as Annie’s Homegrown, Kashi and Kind bars have come onto the scene and shaken up the center store, while Chobani has transformed the yogurt section. Meanwhile, perishable departments have seen an increase in branded products, yet at the same time, private label items have often excelled at giving major CPG players some healthy competition.

Now we invite you to sit back, relax with a cup of your favorite brand of coffee, and take a trip down memory lane — or, in this case, the supermarket aisles of yesteryear.