Grocery Run at No Brand: E-Mart Product Picks

Translated from the Korean original.

Let me introduce No Brand, a place I go to often and rely on a lot.

You all know No Brand at E-Mart, right? Even if you don’t know No Brand, you’ll know E-Mart.

They’ve launched No Brand Burger lately too, and I hear it’s pretty good

I haven’t seen one in my neighborhood yet, so I haven’t tasted it.

When people think of No Brand, the image that mostly comes to mind is a private-brand (PB), low-price brand called No Brand, right?

Like Daiso, No Brand has its own signature products.

There are probably some that a lot of you buy too, so let me introduce a few of them simply.

First up for me is

jjukkumi (webfoot octopus) .Frozen, of course .If you know the taste only fresh seafood has, or if you dislike frozen, skip this one heh

One bag holds 8 of them and costs just over KRW 10,000. They come fully cleaned, which is convenient

Stir-fry all 8 with vegetables and it easily makes 3 meals for 2 people.

Eating out, one serving of jjukkumi is KRW 15,000, so true to No Brand it’s great value and I buy it often to cook at home.

If you’re a light eater, it could probably stretch to 4-5 meals.

Second is chicken tenderloin

We use it to make jangjorim (soy-braised meat). Pork or beef works too, but chicken tenderloin is more tender

So we simmer it down together with eggs, king oyster mushrooms or konjac.

It’s under KRW 10,000 per kilo, so it can’t get better than this heh. I compared it with other discount stores, and for the same kilo

the price shot past KRW 10,000..

I highly recommend the chicken tenderloin!!

Third is blueberries

It would be better to compare with Costco, but we’re a two-person household, so we got a Costco membership and then cancelled it

Having to buy in bulk actually meant spending more

For single-person households or small families, I recommend No Brand blueberries as reasonable in both price and volume

Fourth is frozen cocktail shrimp

I feel like I end up using shrimp quite a lot when cooking. Not much at a time, but for pasta, fried rice, or pad thai

you really do need shrimp, don’t you. But shrimp prices keep going up

These days it’s harder to find something that isn’t going up… but this one too is cheaper than at other discount stores.

This is the frozen shrimp I always pick up when I go to No Brand, hehe

And fifth, wet wipes.

I bought the wipes first of all because they’re biodegradable.. It’s a small step, but we have to look after the environment, hehe

I saw an article saying wet wipes pollute the environment too. Biodegradable ones are a bit pricier, but I like not feeling guilty every time I use one

And finally, Jjanggu snacks and nachos lol

No Brand is a snack powerhouse. Besides these, the PB range has Ojingeo Ttangkong (squid-peanut snacks) and potato chips, and they leave the originals in the dust

And they’re cheap too lol

The biggest advantage of No Brand products is the low price. They keep the quality while minimizing packaging and advertising costs, so compared with other brands

they’ve brought prices down by as much as 67%, apparently.

It’s expanding beyond food and drinks into a wide range of categories: household essentials, electronics and more

Oh right, I use their toothbrushes too, and the price is much cheaper than at other discount stores

I recommend giving them a try. They say it’s good to replace a toothbrush every month and a half, and in practice

it does lose its shape after about that long.

So I don’t use expensive ones; I look for the absolute cheapest, and I remember each one came to less than about KRW 700.

Next time I go grocery shopping at No Brand, I’ll do a proper post about it!!

Neighbors, you have those items too, right – the ones where you say ‘at this mart I always buy this!!!’?

If you’ve tried something good, recommend away!! ^^