Best way to test if consumers actually notice private label quality?

Blind taste tests still hold up really well, but I'd pair them with a branded follow-up round so you can actually measure the 'label lift' effect — that gap tells you a lot. We ran this for a grocery client last year with about 200 respondents per category and the delta between blind vs. branded scores was honestly the most actionable finding. If budget's tight, even a simple monadic design on Pollfish or similar gets you there fast.