CVS Gold Emblem Cheese Crackers Win Contest

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April 27, 2010

Wallet Pop’s Store Brand Scorecard tackled baked cheese crackers this week, and voted CVS’s Gold Emblem cheese crackers the best store brand in the category, though the chain was scolded for its deceiving packaging size.

Sunshine’s Cheez-It brand remains the cheesiest, but the most expensive, while CVS came closest to meeting the national brand bar, according to Store Brand Scorecard.

“Whereas Market Pantry and Jewel try, and fail, to replicate Cheez-It, CVS's brand takes the baked cheese cracker category to a new level,” according to Store Brand Scorecard. “Besides each cracker being nearly twice as big as the Cheez-It and copycat squares, the crackers are much crunchier, much like a baked pita chip, and feel less greasy, too. And that cheddar flavor, while not as pronounced as Cheez-It, is still tangy on the tongue.”

CVS packaging, however, offers the least amount of crackers “even though the box is the biggest (misleading CVS!),” Wallet Pop wrote.

Despite the package size problem, Store Brand Scorecard awarded CVS Gold Emblem’s baked cheese crackers a value score of eight versus seven for Cheez-It on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being the best. For the contest, all brands were purchased at Chicago-area stores on April 17.

Store Brand Scorecard had this to say about Target’s cheese crackers. “Like Cheez-It, Market Pantry is also a bit underwhelming upon first taste. Trouble is, it doesn't get that much better from there. The late-blooming cheese flavor is far too meek and murky to compensate.”

Jewel-Osco didn’t fare much better. “Jewel's batch matches Market Pantry ingredient by ingredient, and the nutritional stats are identical. So is the bland flavor.”

Although both Jewel and Target’s brands have less calories and fat than Cheez-It “what's the point of eating a cheese-flavored cracker without much cheese flavor? Both brands received value scores of four.

Each week, Store Brand Scorecard samples a major food label against three store brands to evaluate which provides the best taste for the price. “Typically store brands cost approximately 30 percent less than regular brand products –– and sometimes, they taste identical, or even better, than the brand product,” Wallet Pop wrote on its web site. “Other times ––like when it comes to bacon –– store brands don't even come close.”

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