‘Same company just different branding’: Customer shows Hellman’s mayo and Best Foods mayo are the same

TikToker Paden Ferguson (@padiano) is continuing his packaged retail food-centric content after highlighting a fact about both Best Foods and Hellman's branded products: They are effectively identical. The difference between the two is only label-deep, and, apparently, location plays a big part in whether or not a store offers either Best Foods or Hellman's products.

@padiano Please tell me I’m not the only one who didn’t know this 😅 #walmartfinds #sundayfunday #hellmanns #thehoneyandoakco #mindblown #stopthetiktokban ♬ original sound - Paden Ferguson

"What brand is this?" Ferguson asks while holding up a container of what appears to be mayonnaise, with the word "Vegan" written on its front label. He covers up the brand of the condiment, giving viewers a chance to try and surmise which company produces the item in his hand. A tiny blue ribbon pokes out from the portion of the product's title that he's covering with his fingers.

"Apparently, depending on where you live, it's different because this one that I got for my grandparents' house is Best Foods," he says, holding up the mayonnaise container that has the words "Best Foods" written up top. He grabs a second container that is of a similar shape, but it is in a yellow bottle, called "Spice Mayonnaise Dressing," and has "Hellman's" on it. "But this one where I live is Hellman's," he says.

He then picks up the Best Foods product again, saying: "I thought this was an off-brand. Nope, just apparently the Rocky Mountains one side or the other, it's different."

Local news outlet KRON 4 reported that both Hellman's and Best Foods are indeed the same brand, but this wasn't always the case. Both brands fall under the Unilever corporate umbrella, which is a business that owns over 400 popular brands ranging from anything and everything you can think of like beauty and skincare products produced by Dove, Lever, Noxzema, Pond's, and Degree to ice creams like Breyer's, Klondike, Good Humor, Popsicle, Talenti, and Magnum.

The outlet reported that "Best Foods and Hellmann’s are brand names for the very same line of mayonnaise products. They’ve simply retained separate branding since 1932, when Best Foods Inc. of California purchased Richard Hellmann Inc. of New York, according to Unilever."

So the difference between the two products are just the labels and the packaging, and depending on where you live in the United States, you'll be either getting Best Foods or Hellman's.

The Daily Dot has reached out to Paden and Unilever via email.

Some TikTokers were shocked to learn that Best Foods was even a product to begin with. "The way I confidently said hellmans & then was surprised," one wrote.

Others pointed out other identical brands: "Carls Jr vs Hardee's." Rally's and Checker's is another example of this. Another TikToker claimed, "Edy's ice cream vs. Dryer's ice cream. Same exact thing."

Someone else said that they, too, were shocked to find Best Foods and no Hellman's when they went shopping out west. "When I first moved to the west coast I was so confused as to why they ONLY had off brand mayo," they wrote.

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