The Major Brand Customers Suspect Is Behind Walmart's Great Value Butter

As inflation continues to hammer the wallets of every American, people are getting pickier about what they purchase at the grocery store, which is why coughing up the extra cash for big name brands is a decision people tend not to make lightly. Everyone knows that buying generic, store-brand products is cheaper than brand-name items, but most people assume the brand name is higher quality. Well, if that was ever true, it doesn't appear to be the case anymore.

Take Walmart's Great Value butter, for example. There are really only 10 companies that are producing everything in the grocery store, and that includes both private labels and store-brand items. So, who's making the butter? Well, although it's never been confirmed, customers are starting to suspect Great Value butter is made by Land O Lakes.

@rachaelishere

We are being duped! 🧈🧈🧈🧈 Edit to add: yes I understand we shouldn't be shopping at Walmart, yes I know there are better brands of butter out there, yes I know I should have shown ALL sides of the box, but I'm not a content creator and I was just making dinner for family and friends. Perhaps SOMEONE switched the product but it was not me. Just a funny occurrence at my summer home in good old Payson Arizona! 💁🏻‍♀️ #butter @Land O'Lakes @Walmart #landolakesbutter #walmart #arizona #payson #fyp #fypシ #fypage @scottkillian7

♬ original sound – Rachael

This TikTok video shows a woman in Arizona opening a box of Land O Lakes butter, only to discover Great Value butter inside. It's difficult to see how this would even be possible without both butters being processed at the same facility. Granted, there is a possibility that the two butters are manufactured separately and simply packaged at the same facility. It's also worth noting that even if they are both produced by Land O Lakes, that doesn't mean the recipes are identical. On Walmart's website, Great Value butter is listed for $3.06 while Land O Lakes is priced at $4.46. That's a full 50% increase in price; nothing to scoff at.

The few small incidents where customers have found Great Value butter inside Land O Lakes boxes wouldn't exactly qualify as a smoking gun, but there's enough smoke here to make us wonder. Given that these suspicions have never been confirmed, there's really no way for us to say one way or the other. There are tons of famous brands who are secretly making Walmart's Great Value products, so it's not beyond the pale to consider Land O Lakes might really be manufacturing Great Value butter.

One way to determine the validity of the claim would be to compare the ingredients, but with butter, that's a difficult proposition since there are so few ingredients. There are only two, in fact: cream and salt. Don't get us wrong, we're all for our food having as few ingredients as possible, but it does make it difficult to tell the butters apart.

So, what's the takeaway here? Are Land O Lakes customers getting conned out of their hard-earned money buying a product that's identical, apart from the name on the box? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of factors worth taking into consideration when determining a butter's quality, but the easiest and most straightforward would be to simply try the two butter brands and see which one you like better. It's a good excuse to indulge in some buttered toast, in any case.