Last week, I hosted a brand testing game with our close friends and it was so fun and challenging. It was my first time planning this game and it took me a good couple of hours just to research pricing and images, buy items from various supermarkets, create score sheets for everyone and a PowerPoint presentation! This game was inspired by my sister-in-law, as she also hosted a similar game during a Chinese New Year meal earlier this year.
In total, I have bought 32 items, like Jaffa cakes, digestive biscuits, custard creams, tissue papers, lemonade drinks and many more. However, I did throw in two Asian snacks into this game, just for variety.
Before this game, I never knew there were so many supermarket brand replacements for branded items. It was very challenging!
Planning:
- Shopping! This is one of the hardest things to do. I went to a lot of places, like Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Tesco, Poundland and Iceland over two weeks to gather the items. It was so frustrating not being able to locate the items or they are overpriced. We don’t have a Waitrose, Aldi or M&S nearby as I tried to source everything with nearby stores.
- Once I gathered my items, I made a list of items and took the product photos. I found it hard to get Lidl’s product images from their website. I ended up having to take my own photos and edited them into the PowerPoint slide via Canva. I presented it using Google Chrome and Chrome Cast it onto my home TV screen.
- Making the scoring sheet. After playing this game, I made an improvement in the scoresheet by adding the Score column. I would suggest printing on at least 160 gsm coloured paper.
- Find an assistant! I find it hard to host this game without an assistant as you will need someone to prepare the next items and tidy up the previous items. My daughter does not like to try new food, hence I recruited her to help me.
- Make sure you have these items: lots of disposable or plastic plates for placing the items, zip lock bags to store the food items after opening, sticky labels to label your plate A or B and pen/pencils for everyone to write on.
- Check if any of your players have any food or nut allergies or if they are vegan as some products are not suitable for vegan, like Jaffa Cakes.
Instructions:
- This game involves testing a range of snacks, drinks and other items. In total, we had a range of 16 items to test with multiple-choice questions.
- Each of you will get an answering sheet and a pen or pencil. On this answering sheet, you can see there are two columns of A and B. After testing each item, you can score the item from 1 to 5. 1 is the least favoured and 5 is the most favoured. This score is for your own use. It will not count towards any of tonight’s scoring.
- On the Branded column, you need to guess which item is the branded item. Like A or B. If you guess it correctly, you will score 1 point.
- On the Question column, you need to put down your answer 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the box. If you guess it correctly, you will score 1 point.
- You then write down your total score in the Score column.
Do you think you can identify the brands by tasting them? Can you tell the difference? Let the competition begin. Click to download how posh are you question sheets & scoring sheets here and the How Posh are you presentation here.
Please note that all the pricing was correct in February 2023. The pricing might be slightly different now. Use these files for your own references or examples. It is not for public use.
One of the test results we found quite shocking was that we unanimously found the Lidl Tower Gate Chocolate Digestives better than the McVitie’s Milk Chocolate Digestives. Please check out my second game: the Branded or Non-Branded game.