7-Eleven Honored for Private Label Excellence

NEW YORK — The Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) honored 7-Eleven Inc. with a 2015 Salute to Excellence Award, which seeks to recognize new store brands products that exemplify high quality, innovation and value to consumers, driving private label sales to new highs.

The Dallas-based chain is the only convenience store chain among PLMA's list of 30 retail chains and wholesalers throughout the United States that were selected as this year's winners. Recipients range from national and regional grocery chains and wholesalers to iconic food and non-food specialty operators, as well as operators with strong but less well-known store brand programs, according to the announcement.

"Great store brands products and programs have expanded well beyond the exclusive province of traditional grocery chains," stated PLMA President Brian Sharoff. "Retailers and wholesalers of all kinds, in foods and non-foods alike, have embraced store brands as fundamental to their competitive strategy. What we are seeing now is chains having built their store brand programs over the past few years are bolstering them with greater innovation, variety and the infusion of product ingredients of the highest quality. Our list of 2015 winners bears this out."

More than 500 individual product nominations were submitted by supermarkets, drug chains, mass merchandisers and wholesalers. Products were then subject to evaluations and judging by eight jury panels consisting of both industry professionals and consumers over a two-day period.

Criteria for judging included product concept, taste, texture and smell (for food items), packaging and presentation, and value for the money.

A special display of the winning products will be placed in the lobby of PLMA's 2015 Private Label Trade Show, taking place Nov. 15-17 in Chicago. The Salute to Excellence Awards program also has an online showcase at www.plmawinners.com.

The full roster of 2015 winners includes:

• Ahold USA
• Aldi
• BJ's
• Brookshire Grocery
• Costco
• CVS
• Delhaize America
• Dean & Deluca
• FreshDirect
• Gordon Food Service
• Metro
• Richelieu
• Roundy's
• Rexall
• Rite-Aid
• 7-Eleven
• Save-A-Lot
• Sephora USA
• Smart & Final
• Target
• Topco
• Trader Joe's
• Ulta
• Uniprix
• Wakefern
• Walgreens
• Walmart
• Wegmans
• Weis Markets
• Western Family
• Whole Foods