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Public Goods Organic Food Roundup Review 2020 | Organic, Limited Ingredient Pantry Items

The Top Line:

We like ingredients we can pronounce - and Pubic Goods does a great job in making sure their products have only simple, organic ingredients. We love some of their products, but unfortunately many miss the mark.

We will continue to add items onto this list as we give them a taste and check the damage on your wallet.

Originally published on 26th May 2020. Updated 14th June to include Veggie Chips and Canned Beans.

Note: we did a FULL Public Goods Roundup Review here!


The Products

The Good Ones (Add to your Cart):

Whole Bean or Ground Coffee $6.50 for 12oz

Spicy Sesame Oil Ramen Noodles $7.00 for 5 pouches

Blueberry Jam $4.00 for 12oz (Review here)

The Bad Ones (Skip the Cart):

Tomato Soup $9.75 for 3 pouches

Organic Peanut Butter $4.75 for 12oz (Review here)

Pesto Sauce $4.25 for 6.35oz

Seven Grain & Lentil $4.50 for 1 pouch

Veggie Chips $3.25 for 5oz bag

Pinto, Kidney, and Black Beans $1.75 for each 15.5oz can


The Experience

  • Purchasing & Shipping: The website is cleanly designed and ordering is a straightforward. The free shipping threshold seems a little on the high side at a minimum of $45. That said, we know why they do it — bigger orders mean fewer shipments which mean lower emissions.

  • Good to Know: The Public Goods blog is kind of awesome. They even post recipes using their ingredients, like this one with the ramen. Or this one about Roasting Coffee.

  • Coupons: $10 off your first order with ‘BLOG10


The Details

Coffee ✔

  • Cost & Products: Both Whole Bean or Ground $6.50 for 12oz

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? Organic, Fair-trade (), non-GMO

  • Packaging: Bag… Non-recyclable. It’s hard to recycle coffee bags because they need to retain the freshness of the beans and thus usually are lined with a plastic.

  • Taste Report

    • Context: We drink a lot of coffee, so we have opinions but we are not connoisseurs.

    • We really liked this coffee! On par with a typical Peet’s or Allegro coffees.

  • Good to Know: Only one roast available; beans sourced from Central and South America

  • Money Report: We will assume you have been an avid coffee drinker at home, making 1 cup per day. That’s 131oz of ground coffee or a little more than 10 bags of coffee per year. Here, we compare both fair trade and non fair trade certified coffees:

    • Public Goods 12oz $6.50 $71/year

    • Counter Culture 12oz $15.25 $167/year

    • Equal Exchange 12oz $7.99 $87/year

    • Thrive Market 12oz $7.49 $82/year

    • Peet’s Coffee 12oz $8.98 $98/year

    Public Goods is cheapest, unless you’re able to nab some of these other brands on a wicked sale.

Tomato Soup

  • Cost & Products: $9.75 for 3 bags

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? Organic and zero preservatives. Ingredients are actually recognizable food products

  • Packaging: Plastic pouch inside of a cardboard box (recyclable)

  • Taste Report: It’s fine. Since there is no milk/cheese, tastes more like the tomato sauce kind of soup rather than the Feta Tomato soup at Pret.

  • Money Report: Maybe you love tomato soup. Here is the cost if you had 10 bowls:

    • Public Goods Tomato 42oz $6.50 $16/per 10 bowls

    • Pacific Creamy Tomato 32oz $4.49 $10/per 10 bowls

    • Amy’s Organic Bisque 14.5oz $2.39 $12/per 10 bowls

    • Amazon Kitchen Tomato Basil 24oz $6.99 $20/per 10 bowls

    Too expensive for not enough interesting flavor. Plus it comes from Lithuania (what?). At this price, we’d prefer the fresh stuff.

Spicy Sesame Oil Ramen Noodles

  • We reviewed the Ramen Noodles here

  • It’s one of our favorite Public Goods items and we just wanted to relive the experience of eating the noodles again


Pesto Sauce

  • Cost & Products: $4.25

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? Organic and zero preservatives. Ingredients are actually recognizable food products

  • Packaging: Glass jar - nothing different.

  • Taste Report: It’s fine. Was it life changing? No. Will we order it again based on taste alone? Maybe. Unclear.

  • Money Report: We like pesto. Here is the cost if you had 10 meals with pesto:

    • Public Goods Pesto 6.35oz $4.25 $14/per 10 meals

    • Barilla Traditional Pesto 6.3oz $2.99 $10/per 10 meals

    • Rao’s Homemade Pesto 6.7oz $5.39 $17/per 10 meals

    • Buitoni Basil Pesto 7.0z $4.49 $14/per 10 meals

    Same as the soup — too expensive for not enough interesting flavor.

Seven Grain & Lentil

  • Cost & Products: $4.50 for 1 serving

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? Organic and zero preservatives. Ingredients are actually recognizable food products

  • Packaging: Plastic pouch….

  • Taste Report: We made breakfast with it and added mushrooms. Not bad.

  • Money Report: Here is the cost if you had 10 meals:

    • Public Goods Seven Grain $4.50 $45/per 10 meals

    • Seeds of Change Seven Grain $2.99 $30/per 10 meals

    • Tasty Bite Organic Grains $2.58 $26/per 10 meals

    • Ancient Harvest Quinoa/Lentil $2.99 $30/per 10 meals

    Nope. Nope. Nope.

Veggie Chips

  • Cost & Products: $3.25 for 5 oz.

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? No preservatives, trans fat, GMOs. It is kosher. BUT, they use a sustainable palm oil.

  • Packaging: Chip bag. The usual.

  • Taste Report: Love them. Super tasty. Very similar to Terra chips.

  • Money Report: Here is the cost if you had 10 servings per year (1oz each):

    • Public Goods Veggie Chips $3.25 $6.50/per 10 servings

    • Terra Original Sea Salt Chips $3.69 $5.43/per 10 servings

    • Full Circle Root Vegetable $3.19 $6.40/per 10 servings

    • Nature’s Promise Root Vegetable $2.99 $4.98/per 10 servings

    If you area already subscribed to Public Goods, it may be convenient to get them delivered, otherwise, not super compelling based on price.

We ate them pretty quickly … so we don’t have our own photo.

Pinto, Kidney, and Black Beans

  • Cost & Products: $1.75 for each 15.5oz can

  • How ‘Clean’ Is This? No preservatives, trans fat, GMOs. Organic ingredients.

  • Packaging: Aluminum can.

  • Taste Report: We’ll be honest - we have not yet tasted them, but we typically throw these three beans into a chili - so we probably wouldn’t be able to tell you a difference anyway.

  • Money Report: Here is the cost if you made chili with 3 cans, 3x per year:

    • Public Goods Canned Beans $1.75 $15.75 for 3 pots of chili

    • Goya Organic Canned Beans $1.29 $11.61 for 3 pots of chili

    • O Organics Canned Beans $1.09 $9.81 for 3 pots of chili

    • 365 Organic Canned Beans $0.99 $8.91 for 3 pots of chili

    Ha. Sadly… Public Goods is just insanely expensive here. No.


We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!