TraderJoes

Last year, grocery sales were up a modest 1.8%, yet sales of organic items more than doubled that growth rate, up 4.4%. Clearly, we're shopping differently. But are we even sure what an "organic" or "all natural" label means? It's more complicated than you might think.

Lots of people adore Trader Joe's, but it's not always perfect in its corporate citizenship. One failing in particular has the activists at Change.org and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Seifert picking fight with the funky grocer: They're accusing the chain of wasting tons of food.

To end the year Store Brand Scorecard is having a bacon battle. In the nine months of the column's existence, the comparison that elicited the most readers, comments and buzz was our review of bacon back in April. We thought we'd expand on that with a new taste test. After trying Oscar Mayer,...

Santa's sick of cookies. At least that's the excuse Store Brand Scorecard's Old Man used every Christmas Eve when it came time to bake a snack for St. Nick. The rationale made sense at the time. Santa's got a lot of houses to go to and a bunch of cookies to eat, so the guy could benefit from at...

There's plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving -- except how much it may cost you. Consumers will spend millions of dollars bulking up on Turkey Day staples, the first wave of many burdensome financial commitments this holiday season, happening at a time when the economy, to put it mildly,...

Of all the columns Store Brand Scorecard has done, tasting different brands of food for you, the dear people, this was one of our most anticipated -- we were sampling pumpkin pie! For the last few weeks we've been trying out different brands of classic Thanksgiving sides such as cornbread stuffing...

The song goes when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore. You know what true amore is? Pizza pie. It's a stereotype that pizza is one of the staples of the college diet, but really, there's a lot of truth to that. Once you split the pie amongst friends, dinner's pretty cheap (a...

We're quickly approaching every kid and confectionery company's favorite day of the year -- Halloween. Some of you might think you're too old to dress up or go trick or treating. Never, we say. Halloween visits to the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Yale remain some of the fondest memories...

People, it's time for a potato revolution. When you go out to eat and want a hot, salty, potato-based side for your sandwich, basically your only option is French fries. And that's all fine and good -- fine French fries do rock -- but as you've learned in school, a little diversity can be a good...

Store Brand Scorecard has done enough studying to know that store brands aren't just knock-offs anymore. You can get cheap, quality private label products in place of national brands (oftentimes, we recommend it), but the grocery stores are wising up. They're tired of playing copycat. In some...