As a college student, now fending for my self, I’ve learned a thing or two about shopping for cheap food. I’m here to report to you my discoveries.
At Rainbow, my personal grocery store of choice (or, erm…convenience/necessity), there are three tiers of food, as far as price goes. The top of these is the name brand food. With the logos you recognize and guaranteed to taste good, this is generally your first instinct to grab. But with training and a keen eye, you learn to spot the next two lower tiers. The second tier is the Roundy’s brand (or whatever the store brand is for the store you’re shopping at). This is almost always as good as the name brand, yet at usually quite a bit cheaper. If I see the Roundy’s brand, I will always choose it over the name brand. It’s cheaper, which is the most important thing, but it also tastes good (maybe not quite as good as name brand, but it’s been awhile since I’ve had name brand, so it’s hard for me to compare).
The final, and lowest, tier is the off brand of the off brand. It is the not store name cheapest of the cheap food, which usually contains the world ‘Value’ somewhere in their name. The brand I will be talking about is, of course, CLEAR VALUE.
I was first introduced to Clear Value when, as I exclaimed over the magnificent value of the Roundy’s brand mac ‘n cheese over the Kraft, that my roommate informed me she had found something cheaper than it- the Clear Value. And as the name states, the value is clear. For example, I was awhile obsessed with Clear Value saltine crackers, which were $1 for a box, as opposed to the usual $3.59 for most anything else. Clearly, there was no way I would be ever purchasing any other brand for saltine.
But tonight, as I drank my Clear Value hot coca I purchased this weekend, I started to wonder about one thing. How does Clear Value manage to make all of its products good enough that you will buy an eat them, but not good enough to really enjoy eating it? Every time one of my roommates or I purchase a new Clear Value product, we ask for the eater’s opinion, and it is consistently something along the lines of, “eh, good enough”. Even when I looked up the brand online, the one review I found of it described it as, yet again, ‘good enough’. How do they manage to make food so consistently mediocre?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I worship at the altar of Clear Value. I love it. This Saturday I stood in front of the grocery store for 5 min in awe and delight when I realized that Clear Value made ice cream. But I just marvel at how they never hit or miss, they always just make a product that is what it is. It’s not bad, but it’s not really good either. It is what it is. And that is, the perfect brand for college students. The cheapest, edible brand. And being a college student, I will stop contemplating how a food can be so consistent in its averageness, drink my coca, and actually get some work done.
(I’d also like that I’ve never written this much about food, or cared this much about food, until I started college. It is now, somehow, an integral topic of conversation daily. But that’s a topic for a whole different post…)
