Every November, thousands of people in the grocery business gather at a convention center in Chicago.

Inside, their booths set up as far as the eye can see. Sales representatives are showcasing just about anything you can find in the aisles of a

supermarket. We make baby diapers. We have lipsticks, foundations, mascara, concealers, cleansers, moisturizers.

Plastic trash bags, plastic drawstring bags, handle bags. You'll find foods from all over the country.

Canned vegetables. Cut green beans, sweet peas, carrots, potatoes. Cookies. We've got sandwich creams,

we've got ginger snaps. Even bacon-wrapped quail meat. We farm-raised quail and we produce fresh quail eggs for consumers across the country.

It's unlikely that you'd recognize any of these companies by name.

They're not household brands like Frito-Lay or General Mills,

but there's a very good chance that you've purchased some of their products without even knowing it.

Because this is the annual trade show for the Private Label Manufacturers Association, or PLMA for short.

It's an organization that represents companies that make the store brand products for major retailers.

The peanut butter that's sold under the

Trader Joe's label, the batteries for CVS, the granola bars for Albertsons.

Store brand products are ubiquitous on grocery shelves, and more people are buying them

than ever before, but it's an industry that, by nature, stays out of the spotlight.

So we went to Chicago to figure out where exactly all those products come from and why stores

carry them in the first place.

Retailers always look at what is selling in their stores and what isn't their goal is going to be to get a private label product that is as close in quality to some of the high demand national brand products and to sell it successfully at a lower price

for the free economics radio network this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crackett.

Today, store brand products.

When you go shopping at your typical grocery store, you'll see a lot of the big name

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