Sainsbury's has become the latest supermarket to make a major change to its own-brand value range in a bid to drive down prices.
The own-brand which include dairy range Mary Ann's and the J.James meat range will now be repackaged under the Stamford Street name. The name is in reference to Sainsbury's former HQ in London's Blackfriars.
It comes after Asda rebranded its own value brand under the Just Essentials range to direct focus on cheaper products during the cost of living crisis. Like Asda, Sainsbury's said its new unified range will make it easier for customers to identify and pick out the higher-value products on shelves, the Mirror reports.
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Rhian Bartlett, food commercial director at Sainsbury's, said: "Our own brand products are becoming more and more important to our customers as the cost of living crisis continues to impact so many households up and down the country. This is why we’ve worked to consolidate and rebrand the Stamford Street range to help our customers more easily find it in stores and online.
"Offering customers delicious food at affordable prices has been at the heart of Sainsbury’s for over 150 years and this is why I’m so proud to see these products now on shelves."
Previously, Sainsbury's CEO, Simon Roberts, said the supermarket would provide further investment for lower priced items. However, a similar move from Asda's yellow Just Essentials range in the autumn brought criticism that it acted as a 'poverty marker', especially because the yellow colour matched the same used for the store's reduced sticker items.
Despite this, Mr Roberts stressed that the new range isn't a move to farm more profit with inflated grocery prices and highlighted that it had made less money to keep prices low for customers. Speaking to the BBC, he said: "We made less profit year-on-year and that’s because we made really conscious decisions to keep our prices as low as we could."
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recorded food price inflation at 19.1 per cent in April - the second highest level recorded since 1977. According to Sainsbury's, the Stamford Street range will be gradually rolled out between now and autumn.
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