Perfunctory brands What work is the “Happy Harvest” brand doing on this can of tomato paste from Aldi? It’s not competing with other brands of canned tomatoes, because Aldi pretty much sells only its own house brands. Despite this, Aldi doesn’t simply take a no-frills approach and uniformly brand all its products with “Aldi”; it invents sub-brands like Happy Harvest to internally differentiate them. It’s as if Aldi wants to protect the food it sells from certain aspects of its own reputation, while also securing the purity of what its own brand signifies. “Aldi” can more concentratedly signify bare-bones economizing if it is not also burdened with signifying passibly edible tomatoes.