Every day we scour the news, social media, expert advice and shopping pages to provide you with the best money saving tips and offers around. We post these top tips to the Harrington Brooks Facebook and Twitter pages for you to read and share, often using #MoneySaving.

We want you to shop savvy, to make the most of the money in your pocket and help you manage on a budget. We don’t always post tips about food as we’ve covered money saving tips for pet lovers, car owners, and suggested items that can be up cycled around the home along with how to avoid pitfalls that waste money.

So when we challenged you to taste the difference between premium branded products and own label items, in a bid to help you save money, we thought it would make a great, fun and educational day at the office. So we challenged our colleagues to a Taste Challenge.

For our very own Taste Challenge we bought chocolate biscuits, orange cordial, white bread and spread and crisps from both Tesco and ALDI and gave our colleagues the chance to say which they preferred from a taste perspective. In all instances the premium brand from Tesco cost more than the own label variant from ALDI or Tesco.

You may be surprised at our findings.

Tesco: McVitie’s milk chocolate digestives

– £1.69 per pack

 ALDI: Biscuit Belmont Company, Digestives, “topped with smooth milk chocolate” – £0.44 per pack Save £1.25 per pack.

 

 

Tesco: Robinsons real fruit orange, double strength cordial – £1.87 per 1.75l or £1.60 per 1.5l ALDI: Sun Quench, double strength orange cordial – £0.95 per 1.5l Save £0.65 per bottle.

 

 

Tesco: Warburton’s medium sliced white bread 800g. Bread: £0.95 per pack and   Lurpak spreadable butter 500g Butter: £3.25 per 500g tub ALDI: Everyday essentials medium sliced white bread 800g £0.36 per pack and

Norpak spreadable 500g Butter: £1.49 per 500g tub

 Save £0.59 on each loaf and £1.76 per 500g tub of spread.

 

 

 Tesco: Pringles sour cream and onion 190g

currently on offer at £1.24

 

 

 Tesco: Chipz sour cream and onion 65g  £1.00 per tube (comparable price £1.15) Save £0.24 per 190g tube.

 

 

Total saving across all five own label items: £4.49

Or to put it another way, the five premium items from Tesco cost £8.73 with the own label variants costing £4.39, that’s 50% less.

Apart from the fun and the buzz that this challenge caused around the office, we were all surprised at how much the cost savings were. And of course, everyone wanted to know the opinions, and which taste was most preferred … so here they are:

Challenge – “Which one tastes better?” Winner Number of votes cast
 

Choccy Biscuits

 McVitie’s milk chocolate digestives with 55% of the vote.

 

  

81 votes cast
Orange cordial Robinsons real fruit orange with 62% of the vote  

108 votes cast
 

Bread and spread

 Warburton’s with Lurpak with 52% of the vote.

 

  

71 votes cast
 

Crisps

 Pringles sour cream and onion with 57% of the vote.

 

  

100 votes cast
Total votes cast   360 votes

 

 

It was a close call but all the premium brands came top in the taste tests. So our question now is; do you prefer these products based on taste or do you prefer them based on price?