In the United Kingdom, it is common practice for retailers to have their own value brand in an effort to compete on price. These brands have become more popular in the UK with shoppers since the Great Recession caused food prices to rise.
The big four
Tesco
Tesco's value brand was originally launched in 1993 as Tesco Value, with distinctive blue-and-white striped packaging. In April 2012 the range was rebranded as Everyday Value, with new packaging and a revised product range which omitted artificial colours and flavours. The original Tesco Value brand had been launched in the midst of a supermarket price war, and targeted a low price point, with cans of beans costing 3p a can and loaves of bread for 7p.
In 2018 Tesco began phasing out Everyday Value in favour of "tertiary brands" such as "Ms Molly's", "Hearty Food Co." and "Stockwell & Co.", in effect imitating what Aldi and Lidl do and reviving a previous attempt in 2009 known as 'Discount Brands at Tesco'.
In 2023 Tesco released a clothing range featuring the original Tesco Value branding.
Brands used: Boswell Farms - fresh beef products; Butcher's Choice - frozen meat; Creamfields - dairy products including milk and cheese; Eastman's - pastry products, including pies, sausage rolls and quiche, cooked meats, coleslaw, potato salad, dips including houmous; Hearty Food Co. - fresh and frozen ready meals, pasta, pizza and fresh foods; H.W. Nevill - bread and morning goods; Ms Molly's - desserts, sweet biscuits, chocolate, cakes; Nightingale Farms - fresh vegetables; Redmere Farms - fresh vegetables; Rosedene Farms - fresh fruits; Springforce - household products such as toilet roll and kitchen paper; Suntrail Farms - fresh citrus/exotic fruits; Stockwell & Co - kitchen cupboard 'essentials' such as canned food (excluding fruit and vegetables which are branded as The Growers Harvest), tea bags and coffee, cereals, drinks, baking goods; named after T.E. Stockwell who sold the first packet of tea to Jack Cohen, founder of Tesco. The Growers Harvest - packaged fruit, vegetables and pulses including rice and oats; Willow Farms - fresh poultry products; Woodside Farms - fresh pork products; Tesco Essentials - health and beauty products.
Asda
Just Essentials by Asda, formerly Asda Smartprice, is a no-frills private label trade name. It can trace its origins to Asda's Farm Stores brand launched in the mid-1990s, which consisted of products that were offered at a lower price than the equivalent famous name brand product and Asda's own brand equivalent. The Farm Stores brand originally consisted of a small number of food only products, largely frozen such as frozen chips and a small range of ready meals: this range later expanded to include fresh food. Just Essentials by Asda products are almost always the lowest price option in a product category in Asda stores. Occasionally this difference is only a few pence; in others, however, it is a marked difference. For example, a box of Just Essentials Biological Washing Powder costs £2.30, while the equivalent Asda brand washing powder costs £5.00, and well known name brand alternatives can cost from £7.00 upwards (as of December 2022).
The Smartprice label was originally a food only brand; however, over the years it expanded to cover almost every product range in the store, including clothing and furnishings with the George Smart Price brand. Like early generic products in the US, some Smartprice products originally lacked what can be thought of as 'frills' in the modern brand name or supermarket own brand; for example, the Smartprice toothpaste had an old fashioned screw cap rather than the now more common flip cap, and the Smartprice range of crisps came in traditional clear plastic bags rather than the foil bags common to most name brand versions. Asda's Smartprice logo and packaging has changed several times since its introduction. It was revised in 2012 to match the branding of Walmart's Great Value line at the time, but a further redesign in 2014 and 2017, removed the similarity in visual style. On 28 March 2022, Asda announced the Smartprice brand would be replaced by a new brand, Asda Just Essentials, commencing May 2022. The similarity between the new brand name and Waitrose's own budget brand, Essential Waitrose, launched in 2009, has led to Waitrose issuing a legal letter to Asda, raising trademark concerns although this was later dropped.