SaveMart store brand

[lake]

I have noticed that SaveMart/Lucky has been slowly transitioning it's Sunny Select brand to a very generic Market Essentials brand. However, Market Essentials is not a TopCo brand or whatnot but instead is a registered trademark of SaveMart. At my local store, water, chips, cereal, and other various items have all been transitioned. This is a very odd move since SaveMart's store brand has never clearly identified that is was a store brand so the reasoning behind changing it to an even more generic brand is questionable. I wonder if this is some attempt to mimic the "Raley's Dailies" promotion.

[storewanderer]

Market Essentials is actually to be a generic/budget brand. It replaced the previous "Maxx Value" brand which has been discontinued, and has been expanded to more items. It is by design a lower quality product than Sunny Select (which is already below average private label quality in my experience).

From what I am seeing the Market Essentials are not replacing Sunny Select (in Reno both are on the shelf in the categories you describe) but given the merchandising issues some Save Marts have I am not surprised that it appears to be replacing Sunny Select in some categories.

Also I have noticed some Sunny Select items that say "distributed by Save Mart" rather than "distributed by Super Store Industries." Cupcake cups, specifically.

This may explain the odd private label situation at Raleys Food Source who is about 90% Sunny Select private label but the other 10% is a strange mix of Western Family (coffee filters, brooms, light bulbs) and Raleys brand (evaporated milk, refrigerated biscuits, shelf stable grated parmesan and such).

[storewanderer]

So I am not really sure what they are doing with their private label. At first up here in Nevada, the Sunny Select comparable item was appearing side by side with the Market Essentials item. Now I am noticing the Sunny Select items disappearing where they appeared side by side in some (but not all) cases.

Specifically I saw jar pizza sauce and all coffee only being sold in Market Essentials brand. No Sunny Select version of those items is available.

Still seeing Market Essentials (at a lower price) beside Sunny Select on canned vegetables, pasta sauce.

It is also more interesting to watch this from Raleys Food Source who still uses Sunny Select as its primary private label. They no longer have any private label coffee there.

I wonder if the Sunny Select label is being phased out...