How Public Goods Is Making Online Grocery Shopping More Sustainable

From ramen packs to hot sauce, eco-friendly practices are the priority for every product.

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Public Goods founders Morgan Hirsh, left, and Michael Ferchak. | Design by Chineme Elobuike for Thrillist
Public Goods founders Morgan Hirsh, left, and Michael Ferchak. | Design by Chineme Elobuike for Thrillist

Some could say the stars aligned for Michael Ferchak to one day co-found a sustainable product company. Long before he became an engineer, he was raised on a Pennsylvania farm by hippie, Quaker parents with the ideals of a simple, more eco-friendly lifestyle.

“My dad was teaching classes on alternative energies at UPenn in the late ’70s,” Ferchak recalls. “He was talking about sustainability and appropriate technology from the time I was a young boy. So that combined with the simplicity and austerity of the Quaker community all just led to this and it makes sense that I wound up where I am now.”

Where he wound up is the head of product development for Public Goods, a membership-based online home goods store, which he co-founded with business partner Morgan Hirsh in 2017. The company has become just as well-known for its minimalistic design as it has for its sustainably minded practices, packaging, and products.

“For us, we’re not just jumping on the bandwagon of some eco-friendly trend,” Ferchak says. “We started our company with sustainability at its heart. The first products we launched included biodegradables made with bamboo and plastics made of sugarcane.”

Beyond packaging, the company plants a tree through its partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects for every order placed. Plus, its entire business model was founded on the idea of streamlining the supply chain (which might be more relevant today than ever), by sourcing factories without a product development company or agency and keeping its product lines—like its design—minimal.

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Photo courtesy of Public Goods

“Whereas another brand might have six or seven different variations of their shampoo for every perceived hair type, we have one,” Ferchak says. “That makes it easier for us when it comes to inventory planning, reordering, and reducing the demand on high-inventory levels.”

In 2019, the company took its membership-based, sustainably streamlined model and expanded into grocery products. While a lot of people still associate the company with toiletries and cleaners, Ferchak says that food and drink products now account for 30% of its revenue.

Public Goods got their customers’ input involved from the beginning, contacting them directly and sending out surveys asking what food products they’d like to see in the shop. The result was pantry essentials like spices, gluten-free pasta, oatmeal, wine, coffee, soup kits, ramen packets, hot sauces, and baking necessities like flour and sugar. Other unique items came from trade shows or word-of-mouth, like the popular garlic and herb banana chips.

“We wanted to focus on a lot of the staples first, but we know you’re never truly going to be able to meet all of your needs if we don’t cover basically the entire supermarket,” he says. “So the next step for us is talking to produce vendors to offer fresh fruits and vegetables, and then we can think about dairy and frozen fish and meat. We really do want to be a comprehensive self-shopping destination.”

Of course, Ferchak admits the timing of adding grocery to the Public Goods portfolio was a bit fortuitous. Largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online consumer packaged goods (CPG) sales in the U.S. increased $63 billion from 2019 to 2020, the same year that 22 billion Americans bought online groceries for the first time.

Additionally, many restauranteurs struggled with decreased business from in-person dining and pivoted to selling CPG products. In fact, David Chang’s Momofuku noodle line is made in the same factory as Public Goods’ ramen.

“I’m pretty sure they tweaked the sauces a bit,” he says, with a laugh. “But yeah, it’s a huge validation that we’re in the right space. Beyond that, our customer doesn’t have to buy their ramen at one place and their skincare at another. We’re giving them that one-stop shop, minimalist approach that gives them convenience and peace of mind.”

It’s a model that works for Ferchak’s family, too, who uses candied pecans and pumpkin seeds on salads, keeps seaweed snacks by the bed, and dips almond cantuccini in their morning coffee.

The brand is always looking to expand and improve, whether it’s adding produce or more global products to its lines, or realizing that using recycled plastic is actually a better way to remove it from the existing stream rather than creative new plastic, even sugarcane-based.

“We’re always looking for more reusable, refillable packaging,” he says. “Every step we take, we ask how we can be more sustainable than the status quo.”

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Jess Mayhugh is the editorial director of Food & Drink for Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.