3. Kirkland Signature
Kirkland Signature is Costco’s line of products. It has gained a reputation for providing cheaper alternatives to well-known name brands. The brand achieves its trademark low prices through many means, including efficient product design as exemplified by Kirkland Signature’s milk jugs. The milk jugs are rectangular in shape with no discernible spout. This makes them incredibly efficient to pack and transport, thus saving the company money.
Unfortunately, the same design makes it a nightmare for customers to pour milk. Spillages occur frequently, to much public frustration. Fortunately, Costco CEO Craig Jelinek is aware of this issue, saying in the company’s annual shareholders meeting: “You know, the milk jug is something that we’ve probably been working on for 15 years. In the last four years, we thought we improved it and fixed this problem with our last engineering that we did on the bottle. I haven’t heard many complaints recently … We can certainly look at some of the bottlers and see where the problem may be—if it’s in the container, if it’s how it’s being bottled,” (via Eat This, Not That!). Hopefully, Costco’s products will become more user-friendly in the near future.
4. Great Value
In 2018, Walmart opened its own milk processing plant in Indiana. The opening allowed the company to cut costs. At the time of publication, Walmart’s Great Value brand sells a gallon of whole milk for around $3.
Despite this reasonable price point, Great Values milk is good quality. It does not come from cows that have been treated with artificial growth hormones. It’s also fortified with vitamin D. One cup of Great Value whole milk actually contains 25% of an adult’s daily recommended vitamin D intake.
The one thing preventing this product from ranking higher on our list is its alarming tendency to spoil quickly. Numerous reviewers, such as this one, have expressed their displeasure on Walmart’s website: “The milk is curdling long before the milk experies, I am starting to wonder what we’re buying I just went to open the second gallon just now and it was thick almost like a thin pudding … This is happening way to many times.”