Most of the brands on your grocery list belong to a handful of companies

Do you prefer Ruffles or Lays? It doesn't matter. They belong to the same company. Many brands you buy daily are produced by just a handful of corporations.

Eight companies own around two-thirds of YouGov's list of the 50 most popular food brands in the US. The lack of diversity is steeper when looking at snack foods.

Mars made over $47 billion in sales in 2022. It owns the most popular candy brands in the US, including Skittles, M&M's, Dove, Twix, Three Musketeers, Snickers, Lifesavers, and Milky Way.

PepsiCo, on the other hand, dominates the savory snack category. It owns Tostitos, Fritos, Frito-Lay, Lays, Ruffles, Cheetos, and Doritos, as well as other food brands like Quaker.

Quaker is not the only pantry item on our list. Kraft-Heinz owns all the products under both brands, and General Mills owns Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, and Cheerios.

Photo: Jacob Rice / Unsplash

Some of these companies also lease production or share product branches of the same brands. For example, General Mills shares Cheerios with Nestle.

General Mills also shares Häagen-Dazs with Nestle, one of the largest multinationals in the world, which shares the Starbucks products brand with PepsiCo.

Nestle operates in 188 countries and owns over 2000 brands, including Hot Pockets, Nesquik, Crunch, Kit-Kat, and Toll House.

In many cases, acquisitions can give consumers an illusion of choice, as one corporation owns perceived competitors. Nestle, for example, owns Pellegrini and Perrier.

The same is true for Mondelez International, which owns Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Ritz, and Club Social. In 2023, its global net revenues were $36 billion.

Unilever operates a broader portfolio of brands. It produces snacks, ice creams (it owns Ben&Jerry's, Breyer's, and Cornetto), and household products under Dove and Suave.

Unilever is not the only corporation that has expanded into different sectors. Some cleaning products companies diversify into foods and snacks, and vice versa.

That was the case with Clorox, which, in addition to producing all the cleaning products under its main brand and Pine-Sol, makes Hidden Valley Ranch and Burt's Bees self-care products.

Nestle also participates in the household market. Under Purina, it produces pet food. However, in the US, the sector is highly dominated by one company: P&G.

Procter & Gamble makes nearly a third of YouGov's top 50 popular household brands, including detergents, soaps, deodorants, and paper towels.

P&G owns Dawn, Crest, Bounty, Swiffer, Febreeze, Mr. Clean, Charmin, Tide, Gillette, Bounce, Downy, Pampers, Old Spice, and Gain, among others.

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