Bush’s produces roughly 80% of the baked beans consumed in the United States. Eighty percent. That means when Americans crack open a can of beans for a cookout, a weeknight side dish, or just because it’s Tuesday, the odds are overwhelming they’re reaching for the same brand. But does market dominance actually mean Bush’s makes the best baked beans? Multiple taste tests from food writers and reviewers suggest the answer is complicated — and that the can sitting in your pantry right now might not be the one you should be buying.
The ones that belong in the back of the pantry
Let’s start at the bottom. In a ranking of 12 canned baked beans, 365 by Whole Foods Market landed dead last. The store-brand organic beans had a thin, runny sauce and noticeably fewer beans in the can than most competitors. The beans themselves were grainy with tough skins — a texture problem that no amount of seasoning can fix. Pricing was fair at around $1.50, but the value falls apart when what’s inside the can is disappointing.
Van Camp’s didn’t fare much better. Their pork and beans in tomato sauce had a flavor profile closer to ketchup than to proper baked bean sauce, and the beans were both mushy and gritty at the same time. That’s a bad combination. The sauce was watery and thin, though the saltiness did help wake up the otherwise bland beans. One reviewer noted you could actually taste the beans themselves in Van Camp’s — which would be a compliment if the texture weren’t working against it.
Novelty flavors are fun but that’s about it
Serious Bean Co. makes a Dr Pepper-flavored baked bean. Yes, really. And honestly, reviewers at Sporked gave the brand credit for some of their specialty flavors, particularly their hot honey and Buffalo varieties. The Buffalo beans scored surprisingly well — spicy, faithful to the Frank’s RedHot flavor profile, and packed with firmer beans than the company’s soda-flavored offering. But the Dr Pepper version? It delivered on the soda promise, which is both its strength and its weakness. Too sweet, not enough acidity to balance things out. A fun novelty. Not a pantry staple.
The hot honey variety earned an 8 out of 10 from Sporked’s panel, who praised the creamy, plump beans and a sauce that managed not to be syrupy despite all that honey. If you’re the kind of person who puts hot honey on pizza (no judgment), these might actually be worth seeking out. For the rest of us, though, classic-style beans are probably the safer bet.
What about store brands?
Generic and store-brand baked beans are always a wild card. One Canadian food blogger tested several house brands and found them uniformly mediocre — not terrible, but never good enough to recommend. Metro’s Selection brand left him “puzzled in a way I shouldn’t be puzzled by baked beans,” which is honestly the funniest possible review of canned beans. No Name brand had substantial bean size but a sauce that was too thick and slightly congealed.
Kroger’s Country Style baked beans did a little better in the American market. They delivered on the promise of extra bacon and brown sugar — you could see strips of bacon floating in the sauce. But the overall flavor balance was off. No vinegar bite, no mustard sharpness, no pepper. Just bacon drowning in brown sugar. Add some hot sauce and they’d improve, but should you really have to fix a product after you open it?
The Heinz situation is more complicated than you’d think
Here’s the thing though — Heinz baked beans are not all the same product. There’s the British import version (Heinz Beanz, with that irritating Z), the Canadian Deep Browned, the Canadian British Style, and the American-market Heinz Beans With Tomato Sauce. They taste different from each other. The British import won a Canadian taste test handily, praised for being tomatoey, properly saucy, and not overly sweet with firm beans. The Canadian versions? Mushy. One had a tinny taste attributed to the can.
In the American market, Heinz landed around the middle of the pack. The beans were less overcooked than most competitors and had a strong, pleasant bean flavor — almost like cannellini beans, according to one reviewer. The sauce was straightforward tomato without much sweetness, which sets it apart from the molasses-heavy American style. Heinz is essentially the anti-Bush’s: minimal sweetness, maximum tomato, no pork. If you grew up on sweet Boston-style baked beans, the Heinz approach might taste like something’s missing. If you’ve ever had beans on toast in London, you’ll feel right at home.
The sugar-free version nobody liked
Bush’s Zero Sugar Added baked beans sounded like a smart, health-conscious choice. They were not. One taste tester found them ironically too sweet, with an artificial aftertaste he blamed on the sucralose. That tracks. Artificial sweeteners in savory products almost always create a weird disconnect — your brain expects one thing and gets something uncanny instead. Sporked also tried Bush’s Zero Sugar and didn’t rank them among their top picks.
The lesson here is pretty simple. Baked beans are inherently a sugary food. The sauce is built on sweetness, whether from brown sugar, molasses, or tomato. Trying to strip that out and replace it with sucralose doesn’t make a better bean — it makes a confused one. If you’re watching your sugar intake, you might be better off with a Heinz-style tomato bean that’s naturally lower in added sugar rather than an artificially sweetened version of an American classic.
Amy’s is great if you can stomach the price
Amy’s Organic Vegetarian Baked Beans showed up in every single taste test I reviewed. And every time, they scored well. Sporked gave them an 8.5 out of 10 and named them the best vegetarian baked beans available. One reviewer noted that when you open the can, you see beans packed tightly together with only a thin layer of sauce between them — basically the opposite of the half-empty Whole Foods can. The beans are firm, the flavor splits the difference between tomato-forward and sweet, and they work without any pork.
And that’s not even the weird part. One Canadian reviewer ranked Amy’s as his overall number one — above every other brand, including Heinz. But he also noted the can cost $8.99 Canadian, which made him physically uncomfortable. “I hate when the most expensive brand wins,” he wrote. In the U.S., you’re looking at somewhere around $4-5 per can depending on your store, which is still significantly more than a $2 can of Bush’s. Are Amy’s beans twice as good? Probably not. But they’re legitimately excellent.
B&M deserves more attention than it gets
B&M is an old New England cannery that’s been around since the 1800s and has been canning baked beans since the 1920s. Their beans are baked in actual brick ovens, which no other major brand does. They use pea beans instead of navy beans, and testers noted a distinctly earthy flavor — somewhere in the neighborhood of black-eyed peas but with their own character. They ranked fourth in one major taste test, which is quietly impressive for a brand most people outside New England have probably never heard of.
Walnut Acres is another under-the-radar pick. Their organic beans had the best texture of any bean in one test — firm, smooth, reminiscent of homemade. The sauce leaned molasses-heavy with a mustardy kick. But the can had fewer beans than average and cost over $4, putting it in that same Amy’s territory where quality comes at a premium. Good beans, bad value equation.
So does Bush’s actually deserve the crown?
This is where things get interesting. Bush’s original and homestyle varieties consistently landed in the middle of rankings — decent but unremarkable. Too sweet, according to multiple testers. One reviewer said he felt like he needed to brush his teeth after eating them. But here’s the thing: Bush’s specialty varieties absolutely dominated Sporked’s rankings. Their Brown Sugar Hickory beans earned a perfect 10 out of 10. The Maple & Cured Bacon variety scored a 9. The Southern Pit BBQ Grilling Beans took the overall top spot in their most recent test.
Bush’s Homestyle beans — the classic nostalgic pick — earned a 9.5 out of 10 from Sporked’s panel. “When I think of baked beans, this is what I imagine,” one reviewer wrote. Sweet, gloopy, creamy, tomatoey. No frills. The BBQ variety was praised for tasting like classic baked beans mixed with the kind of tangy BBQ sauce you’d dip chicken nuggets into. Bush’s Sweet Heat beans delivered exactly the promised combination of sweetness and spice, scoring an 8 out of 10. So while the flagship Bush’s Original might not blow anyone away, the brand’s extended lineup is genuinely impressive. They just understand what Americans want from a can of beans.
The actual best can to grab next time you’re at the store
Across three different taste tests from three very different reviewers, a pattern emerged. If you want straight-up best flavor and you don’t mind spending more, Amy’s organic beans consistently rank near the top. If you want the best value and widest variety, Bush’s specialty flavors — particularly Brown Sugar Hickory and Southern Pit BBQ Grilling Beans — are hard to beat. And if you want something different, the British import Heinz Beanz offers a lighter, more tomato-driven alternative that might change how you think about baked beans entirely.
Skip the Bush’s Zero Sugar, leave the 365 Whole Foods brand on the shelf, and if someone offers you Van Camp’s at a cookout, just smile and eat the potato salad instead. Your best move next time you’re in the bean aisle is to grab a can of Bush’s Brown Sugar Hickory or Southern Pit BBQ — they’re around $2-3, available almost everywhere, and they earned near-perfect scores from people who ate enough canned beans to last a lifetime.
