8 Aldi Food Finds That Are Secretly Made by Major Brands

Walk into Aldi for the first time, and you might notice something missing: many of the national brands you’d see at other grocery stores. Instead, most of the shelves are filled with Aldi-exclusive labels. In fact, more than 90 percent of the products Aldi sells are exclusive brands.

That limited selection is part of Aldi’s strategy for keeping prices low. The grocer carries fewer versions of the same product and operates smaller stores than many traditional supermarkets.

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Of course, Aldi doesn’t make all of those products itself. Some of Aldi’s private-label products have been made by major food companies that also stock grocery stores under their own names and brands. And once you start digging into who makes what, there are some pretty unexpected connections.

There are also plenty of rumors about Aldi products online, so we did some digging of our own. We checked USDA and FDA records, recall notices, and food-industry sources to find connections we could back up. Suppliers can change, and sharing a manufacturer doesn’t mean two products are exactly the same, but we did find that some big name-brand food companies are secretly behind some of the Aldi favorites you may already have in your kitchen.

Name-Brand Cereals Hiding in Plain Sight

Aldi’s ties to a major cereal maker go back decades. In 1998, a CDC investigation into a cereal recall identified Malt-O-Meal as the manufacturer of Millville Toasted Oats sold at Aldi. The same plant was also making Malt-O-Meal Toasty O’s, along with store-brand cereals for several other grocery chains.

Post Holdings acquired Malt-O-Meal’s parent company, MOM Brands, in 2015, and Malt-O-Meal became part of Post Consumer Brands. A few years later, Post was linked to another Millville cereal. In 2019, Store Brands, a trade publication covering the private-label industry, listed Post Consumer Brands alongside Aldi’s Millville Original Balance Multigrain Cereal in its Editors’ Picks Awards.

Today, Post’s cereal lineup includes Honey Bunches of Oats, PEBBLES, Grape-Nuts, Honeycomb and Malt-O-Meal. The company also makes cereals specifically for private-label partners, so producing cereal without the Post name on the box is nothing new.

Related: The Big-Name Brands Secretly Behind 12 of Walmart’s Great Value Labels

The Big-Name Brands Hiding Behind Aldi’s Private Labels

Some Aldi-exclusive products are made by companies you already know from the grocery aisle.

1. Rosina Food Products

Aldi’s Bremer Italian Style Meatballs have been manufactured by Rosina Food Products, a New York-based company that’s been making frozen Italian specialties since 1963. Rosina is also behind the namesake Rosina brand, along with Celentano, Mama Lucia and Italian Village.

The connection became especially clear in February 2026, when Rosina recalled nearly 9,500 pounds of Bremer Family Size Italian Style Meatballs sold at Aldi stores nationwide due to possible metal contamination.

2. Tyson Foods

Aldi’s Kirkwood chicken has a major name behind at least some of its products: Tyson Foods, one of the largest poultry producers in the country. Aldi has directly confirmed the connection too.

In 2019, the grocer recalled Kirkwood Buffalo and Honey BBQ Crispy Chicken Strips in cooperation with Tyson Foods due to the potential presence of pieces of metal in the products. The recall directed customers with questions about the chicken strips straight to Tyson Foods Consumer Relations.

Tyson is a giant in the meat aisle. The company says it produces about 20 percent of the beef, pork and chicken in the United States, and its brands include Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Aidells and State Fair, in addition to Tyson.

3. J&J Snack Foods

The company behind SUPERPRETZEL and ICEE has also made food for Aldi. In 2019, J&J Snack Foods Handhelds recalled more than 56,000 pounds of stuffed sandwiches, including Bremer Classic Pepperoni Pizza and Ham & Cheese Hot Stuffed Sandwiches sold at Aldi.

J&J’s story started with pretzels. Founder Gerald Shreiber bought a struggling pretzel company at a bankruptcy auction in 1971 and turned it into SUPERPRETZEL. The company has since added some pretty recognizable snack-aisle and concession-stand names, including ICEE, Dippin’ Dots and Luigi’s Real Italian Ice.

4. Fresh Express

Aldi’s Little Salad Bar has a big name in the bagged salad business behind at least some of its greens. In 2020, Fresh Express recalled several Little Salad Bar products sold at Aldi that had been produced at its Streamwood, Illinois, facility, including Garden Salad, Classic Coleslaw and two chopped salad kits.

And Aldi wasn’t the only store brand coming out of the Fresh Express facility. The same recall included salads carrying Walmart’s Marketside, Jewel-Osco’s Signature Farms, Hy-Vee and other private-label names, along with salads sold under the Fresh Express name itself. Fresh Express is no small player, either: The company says it produces nearly 40 million pounds of salad each month.

Related: The 11 Best French Groceries to Buy at Costco (and 3 to Skip)

5. Reser’s Fine Foods

That tub of macaroni salad from Aldi has ties to a company that’s been making deli salads for decades. In 2024, Reser’s Fine Foods recalled a batch of 32-ounce Aldi Deli Macaroni Salad that it had produced at one of its regional facilities and distributed to Aldi.

Deli salads are what put Reser’s on the map in the first place. The family-owned company got its start in 1950 when Mildred Reser began making potato salad in her Oregon farmhouse kitchen and started selling it to stores the following year. Today, Reser’s sells its own line of macaroni salads, potato salads and coleslaw, and has grown into one of the country’s largest family-owned prepared-food companies.

6. Fratelli Beretta

The company behind Fratelli Beretta salami and prosciutto has also made charcuterie for Aldi. In 2024, Aldi recalled its Appleton Farms Gourmet Deli Selection in cooperation with Fratelli Beretta USA after a potential processing issue.

Fratelli Beretta has been in the meat business since 1812, when it got its start as a small meat-processing business in Italy. More than 200 years later, the company sells its own salami, prosciutto, mortadella and pancetta in the U.S., where it has been producing meat since the 1990s.

The Secret Behind Aldi’s Famous Frozen Pizzas

Mama Cozzi’s is one of Aldi’s best-known private labels, and at least some of its frozen pizzas have ties to the company behind DiGiorno. In 2015, USDA records show that Nation Pizza, a pizza manufacturer in Schaumburg, Illinois, produced Mama Cozzi’s Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza for Aldi.

Nation Pizza later became part of Nestlé. A 2021 USDA recall for DiGiorno Crispy Pan Crust Pepperoni Pizza identified the manufacturer as Nation Pizza Products and noted that the company was owned by Nestlé USA. Even the establishment number on the DiGiorno pizza, EST. 1682A, matches the one listed on the recalled Mama Cozzi’s pizzas. In other words, Aldi’s rising-crust pizza and DiGiorno pizza have come out of the same pizza plant.

Final Thoughts

These are only some of the Aldi manufacturers we could trace through public records. Who makes many of the grocer’s other private-label foods isn’t nearly as easy to pin down, so there may be more big names behind those Aldi labels that you just don’t know about yet.

Related: 12 Generic Store-Brand Items That Are Secretly Made by Major Brands