Which store brand foods taste best? 5 Valley grocery stores put to the test

We know that generic and store-brand products will cost you less, and sometimes even taste better than the brand name, but which store will give you the best taste?

We shopped grocery stores across the Valley -- Albertsons, Bashas’, Fry's, Safeway, and Walmart -- for items you are most likely to take to a party.

Included on our list were chocolate chip cookies, loaf cake, crackers and apple juice.

We took our party food to Arizona Mills Mall to see which store's brand would impress our tasters most.

Our testers had no idea which store brand they tasted, but for some items, they knew right away that they didn't want to taste it again.

LEMON CAKE

The winner was clear for the lemon cake.

Half of our tasters preferred the cake from Bashas’ and it was also the most expensive for the loaf cake among the stores we tested, at $4.49.

Fry's and Walmart tied for second.

Albertsons had one of the lower prices, $2.99, but also got the fewest votes.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

It was definitely a closer competition for the chocolate chip cookies.

Bashas’ and Fry's tied for first.

Walmart was the next favorite, while Albertsons came in last.

CRACKERS

We had some fun tasting the baked crackers.

Fry's was not the favorite in this category.

In fact they didn't get any votes.

Apparently salt is in, because the crackers that many of our tasters called salty came from Safeway and got the most votes.

Safeway also charges the most for these crackers, at $2.99.

APPLE JUICE

We washed everything down with some nice, cold apple juice.

I was really surprised at all of the different opinions because the ingredients of the apple juice at all five stores are exactly the same.

And still none of our testers voted for Fry's or Safeway.

The favorite was Albertsons for half of our testers.

Bashas’ and Walmart split the rest of the votes.

FINAL RESULTS

In the end, Bashas’ won the most categories, so they get a gold star.

All of the other stores won just one category, so they get a silver star.

Since the results were so close, I’d say give your favorite store's brand a try.

You can save yourself some cash and you may find a new favorite food.

See our full breakdown of the results.