NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is redesigning the packaging of its Great Value products to help customers instantly spot whether a bag of spicy chips is gluten-free or how much protein is packed into a serving
of chicken nuggets.
Encompassing 10,000 different products, Great Value is Walmart's biggest store brand and one of the largest food and consumer packaged goods labels in the U.S. The revamp announced Wednesday comes as shoppers have increasingly treated private-label foods not as a stepdown from national brands, but more as an equivalent.
The new cartons, boxes, bags and other containers will start to appear on Walmart store shelves next month, said Scott Morris, senior vice president of Walmart’s U.S. private brands division. The overhaul does not involve any changes to the products themselves, he said.
The updates include images that are intended to make the product inside more tempting to shoppers. For example, a Great Value frozen lasagna will show a the pasta garnished with a basil leaf, served on a full plate and displayed on a red checkered tablecloth against a red background, according to Walmart executives. The current box features the lasagna against a white background.
Walmart also is moving nutritional information to the upper right hand corner of Great Value food packages, Dave Hartman, Walmart’s vice president of creative design, said. The information previously had no standard location, he said.
U.S. consumers have become more picky about the ingredients in their food, looking for protein-packed meals or items without gluten, for example. Walmart said its customers, as well as the workers who have to pick items off shelves quickly to assembly online orders, need to be able to spot ingredient lists quickly to speed up their shopping or production.
Bags of Great Value chicken nuggets will have “11 grams of protein per serving” printed in the upper right hand corner. The photo on the bag shows the nuggets on a plate with a container of red sauce in the middle. The packages currently in stores don't mention the protein content or feature an entire plate.
Walmart launched Great Value 33 years ago, and the latest changes represents the brand's first full redesign in more than a decade.
“We’re offering this great product at a very affordable price, but there was always this kind of lagging feeling that a customer was buying this product that felt like they had to compromise,” Hartman said. “So that was one of the key impetuses in terms of redesigning the brand.”
Industry analysts have said that challenging economic conditions in recent years pushed more consumers to buy store brands instead of familiar name brands, which tend to be more expensive.
Private brands accounted for 23.9% of the packaged food and beverage products sold in the U.S. last year, up slightly from 23.7% in 2024, according to market research firm Circana. That compares with 76.1% for national name brands last year, down from 76.3% in 2024.
Walmart said its store label brands account for about a quarter of the company's U.S. merchandise sales. The company declined to provide sales figures for Great Value products but has repeatedly said that shoppers are increasingly gravitating toward its store brands.
Other food companies are also redesigning their packaging. PepsiCo. announced earlier this month a refreshed design for Tostitos to highlight claims about colors, flavors or preservatives.
Redesigning Great Value's packaging follows other moves by Walmart to invest in its store label products. The company said last fall that it planned to remove synthetic dyes from its food private brands by 2027.
