Who Manufactures Walmart's Great Value Brand?
Walmart's Great Value brand is not made in Walmart factories. I break down which national manufacturers (Conagra, Sara Lee, Marathon Cheese) actually fill...
Quick Answer
Great Value is Walmart's flagship private label, but Walmart does not manufacture any of it. The brand was launched in 1993 and now covers more than 5,000 items, all produced by third party manufacturers under contract.
Known and reported partners include ConAgra Foods (frozen meals, condiments), Sara Lee (some bread items), Marathon Cheese (cheese and dairy), Peter Pan parent Post Holdings (peanut butter), and dozens of regional dairies, bakeries and snack makers. Walmart leverages its retail scale to force pricing that brand name suppliers cannot get from any other customer.
How Great Value Works as a Business Model
Walmart's private label strategy is built on volume. The retailer sells roughly $611 billion of goods globally each year. When it tells a supplier "we will buy 30 million units if you produce them at this price," very few manufacturers can afford to say no.
The supplier still gets to keep their own branded product on the shelf right next to the Great Value version. They take a margin hit on the private label run but make up for it with the guaranteed volume and shelf space security.
The Confirmed and Reported Manufacturers
Walmart, like Costco, treats supplier identities as confidential. But years of consumer reporting, FDA registrations, plant code lookups and supplier press releases have revealed a fairly complete picture.
- Frozen meals and canned vegetables: ConAgra Foods, which also owns Banquet, Healthy Choice and Marie Callender's.
- Peanut butter: Post Holdings (the company behind Peter Pan) runs production for the smooth and crunchy jars.
- Cheese: Marathon Cheese Corporation, the same processor that supplies Kraft.
- Bread and baked goods: Sara Lee (Bimbo Bakeries USA) and Flowers Foods handle regional production.
- Ice cream: Wells Enterprises (the maker of Blue Bunny) produces multiple Great Value flavors.
- Snack chips: Shearer's Foods and Utz both make Great Value branded chips depending on the region.
- Coffee: Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA roasts a significant portion of Great Value ground coffee.
How to Decode the Milk Carton
The most useful trick for any Great Value buyer is the FDA dairy plant code on the side of milk jugs, cheese blocks and yogurt tubs. Every dairy plant in the United States is assigned a unique five digit code, formatted as two digits for the state followed by three digits for the plant.
For example, code 06-100 means California plant 100. Anyone can look these codes up on the Where Is My Milk From database (whereismymilkfrom.com), which traces the plant back to its operating dairy company. You will quickly see that the same plant code shows up on Great Value milk, the local store brand, and sometimes the name brand sitting beside it.
Why The Same Product Lives Under Three Labels
Dairy and bakery are the clearest examples. A single Dean Foods or Bimbo Bakeries plant might run a batch of 2% milk in the morning, change the labelling machine, and run the same liquid under three different brand names by the afternoon. The product is identical. The packaging, the price and the shelf placement are the only things that change.
This is why Great Value milk is often within pennies of the cost of production. There is no second factory, no special recipe, just a different label on the same gallon.
What Walmart Does NOT Want You to Know
The peanut butter recalls of the late 2000s revealed something interesting. When the Peanut Corporation of America had a salmonella outbreak, dozens of brands had to recall product, including Great Value. The FDA recall notices listed the specific plant lot numbers, and consumers were able to confirm that the same plant was running Great Value, Peter Pan and several store brands on rotating shifts.
These episodes pull back the curtain on the private label industry. The brand on the front of the jar matters far less than the lot code on the bottom.
The Takeaway
Great Value is not a cheaper, lower quality knockoff. It is, in most cases, the exact same product as the name brand sitting next to it, packed by the same manufacturer in the same plant, just with a different label and a much lower price. Walmart's only innovation here is using its retail power to force the existing supply chain to give it a discount.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Great Value the same quality as the name brand?
For dairy, basic groceries, baking staples and frozen vegetables, yes, often produced in the same facility. For some snacks, condiments and ready meals, the recipe may be slightly modified to hit a lower price.
Where is Great Value made?
Across more than 1,000 supplier facilities, mostly in the United States for fresh and frozen items, with packaged goods sometimes sourced internationally.
Why is Great Value so much cheaper?
Walmart's scale lets it negotiate prices well below what any other retailer can match. It also skips most of the marketing and slotting fee costs that a national brand must absorb.