What Brand Is Possibly Behind Aldi's Earth Grown Line Of Products?

From low prices, massive cult followings, and popular private brand products, stores like Trader Joe's and Aldi share a lot of common characteristics. 

While selling private-label products is a good way to pique curious customers' interest, it also has us wondering who's really behind those brands. Well, for one of Aldi's most popular brands, we might have an answer to at least one part of that mystery. One of Aldi's most popular brands is Earth Grown, a vegan and vegetarian line of products. While it's not officially confirmed, we have a pretty good hunch that SmithFoods is behind much of the Earth Grown brand's offerings. Here's what we know. 

SmithFoods is a manufacturer of dairy products. In 2020 the manufacturer issued an allergy alert for Aldi's Earth Grown Vegan Non-Dairy Almond Based Frozen Desserts. (The alert was due to the possible presence of undeclared cashew allergens in the product.) So this means that SmithFoods did, at least at one time, produce this product for Aldi. Here's what else the company might be responsible for.  

It makes sense that SmithFoods would be a producer of Aldi's Earth Grown Vegan Non-Dairy Almond Based Frozen Desserts. The obvious alert aside, SmithFoods currently produces other dessert products similar to Earth Grown's under some of their other product lines. For example, SmithFoods produces many frozen desserts for the brand Ruggles, as well as almond milk under the brand name Ajoyo. 

Aside from Earth Grown's yogurt desserts, what else could SmithFoods be behind? Well, some other Earth Grown products include vegan meatballs, vegan cheese, tofu, and non-dairy ice cream. While SmithFoods might not be the producer of all of these products, it's very likely they had a hand in those other dairy offerings since that is what they specialize in. And after a little digging, we might have uncovered more of the mystery. We found one other potential producer of some of those other Earth Grown products.

While we might know for certain the origin of one Earth Grown product, we can still only speculate about the current producers of this product line.

While we know a little bit about SmithFoods's role in Aldi's Earth Grown line, there is one more brand that might have something to do with the vegan meat side of things. We're talking about the company Cuisine Innovations Unlimited LLC. 

In 2022 Cuisine Innovations Unlimited LLC issued a recall for two of Aldi's Earth Grown products: The Earth Grown Vegan Traditional Falafel and Garlic & Herb Falafel. The recall was due to these products potentially containing E. coli, an announcement that was big news at the time. Today, the issue has been resolved and these products were even awarded with the Good Housekeeping Seal in 2021. 

Cuisine Innovations Unlimited LLC is a specialty food manufacturer that makes many different food products, from Italian to Asian cuisine. Another one of the company's specialties is meatless alternatives like falafel grillers and veggie burgers, which would be a key link to Aldi's Earth Grown line. So now we know of two potential links to Aldi and some of its wholesalers. We'll just have to wait and see if we can find any more.