Celebrity food brands are the nepo babies of the grocery aisle. Flashy. Questionable. Kind of annoying. I mean, do these people really think they can slap their famous face on a jar of pasta sauce and we’ll just buy it? (Okay… sometimes we do.) Even products by celebrity chefs make me dubious. (Honestly, I blame Guy Fieri’s line of frozen meals for that. Not your best work, Guy.) It’s hard to see a celeb’s name on a grocery item and not view it like a cash grab marketing tactic.
But here’s the thing: Some celebrity food brands are legitimately great. I know, I know, but I promise I’m not selling out here. (I would be willing to sell out, if a celebrity wanted to give me money, but that remains to be seen. My DM’s are open, people.) If you are curious about what celebrity owned brands are actually worth spending your hard earned money on, we rounded up these products for your consideration. Check ‘em out.
The following article contains affiliate links that may generate a small commission to us when you make a purchase through the link. Learn more about how we work with affiliates here.
Shaq, my hero and icon, I’m so proud of what you’ve done with these gummies. And that’s not just because I saw this video of you in a food lab and was instantly endeared, just like any other simpleton who falls for one instance of good marketing. I actually tried these with my own stupid taste buds, and I really liked them. First off, like Shaq, these gummies are… uniquely large. One takes up a good chunk of my palm. Second, both the sweet fruit gummies and the sour gummies have nice, bold flavors that are pretty hard to fault.
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
Rating:
8.5/10
Sporks
Best Celeb Foods
Shaq-a-licious XL Gummies Pineapple Slurpee
Oh, yeah. After his viral gummies, Shaq came out with a gummy pineapple Slurpee. It’s bomb. Since it’s modeled after his sour pineapple gummy, it carries a strong candy pineapple flavor with a hint of sour to balance it out. You can find them right now at any place you can typically find Slurpees (aka, all 7-Eleven, Speedway, and Stripes locations).
Credit: Liv Averett / 7-Eleven
Rating:
8/10
Sporks
Best Celeb Foods
Chamberlain Coffee Salted Caramel Latte with Oatmilk
Emma. Emma. Listen, girlie. You’re my original coffee influencer, okay? Philz is my favorite coffee shop in L.A. because you convinced me to go there. (Their coffee is sincerely incredible and if you’re ever in Los Angeles, please visit one of their locations.) So I have to be honest with you: I don’t love all of your bottled coffee products. But this salted caramel latte definitely hits. It has a nice, toasty caramel flavor, and has the perfect balance of caramel sweetness and coffee oomph.
Sorry, y’all. I have to put Snoop’s recent behavior in American politics aside to tell you that Dr. Bombay’s Strawberry Cream Dream is a very good ice cream. It was the first celebrity product I ever reviewed at Sporked, and I can still recall that distinct creamy sherbert texture mixed with bits of golden sandwich cookie and mellow, lightly sweet strawberry. I’m not a huge strawberry ice cream fan, so I didn’t expect to enjoy this as much as I did. Anyway, that’s all the commentary Snoop is getting from me. If only he stuck to narrating otters.
Okay—now we’re getting into the really good stuff. As far as celebrity food brands go, we’ve never tried a Dolly product we didn’t like. This guitar-shaped bottle of pancake syrup is just as cute as it is delicious. The flavor is very sweet, but in a warm and cozy way. It isn’t too artificial, and it has a caramel finish that’s extremely addictive.
All of Dolly Parton’s cake mixes were a big hit with us. (Our least favorite still received 8/10 Sporks, okay.) But this coconut cake mix actually tastes like real shredded coconut. My colleague Jordan Myrick called it “the best rendition of a coconut-flavored food I’ve ever had from a package.” Talk about an endorsement, y’all.
If I had one plea for Giada De Laurentiis, I’d ask her to please lower the prices of her Giadzy products. Among celebrity food brands, this one deserves to be accessible to the average gluten-free consumer. They set a whole new bar. Most gluten-free Giadzy pasta I’ve tried is better than plenty of gluten pastas I buy on a regular basis. This Taccole Corte stood out to us because the chew, texture, and flavor are simply divine. Sauce clings to the pasta’s ruffled edges. This is great for a simple bowl of pasta or a layered, more complex pasta bake.
Miss Patti LaBelle has never, not once, let us down. Her Cajun-style fettuccine alfredo? Incredible. Her blackberry cobbler? Yeah, keep scrolling, I’m about to rave about that in a second. This mac and cheese? It’s our number one frozen mac and cheese, you guys. It’s so incredibly indulgent and buttery, with egregious amounts of cheddar and Monterey jack cheese. Like Dolly, Patti has completely transcended any grocery store nepo baby status to become one of the brands we actually trust the most. Patti’s stamp of approval basically guarantees you’re about to eat something that tastes like it’s layered with flavor… and an unapologetic amount of butter.
Patti’s Blackberry Cobbler saved our Walmart bakery pies taste test. Things were looking pretty grim in the beginning. And then came Patti, our lord and savior, with a lush, jammy cobbler filled with crushed blackberries (chewy seeds and all) and just enough tartness to balance the sweetness. A lot of Walmart bakery pies seem to use the same kind of flavorless crust. Not Patti. Bland is simply not in her vocabulary. Her thick cobbler crust is like its own entire dessert—it’s so golden and buttery, with granulated sugar on the edge, I was tempted to peel it off and eat it like a cookie. Yes, like an insane person. That’s how good this cobbler was, okay? We all went a little insane eating it.
Ariana Losch is a Sporked contributor, webcomic writer, java junkie, and bad TV enthusiast. She only ever feels at peace laying out on a beach like a kebab, roasting in the sun; sadly, she can never move back to Florida, her home state, because there simply isn’t enough good Mediterranean food. You can find her overstaying her welcome at just about every LA coffee shop, working on a screenplay and avoiding all eye contact. (She is embarrassed to be there, please leave her alone.)
Subscribe
Get all the top food rankings, new product reviews, and other grocery content delivered to your inbox every other week.
