Tea blending is recipe work (this much Assam, this much cardamom, weighed the same every batch), and tea pricing should be exactly as precise. The two lines that sink casual tea pricing: botanicals added 'to taste' that never hit the books, and the beautiful tin that quietly costs a quarter of the product.
The cost of a 4 oz tin
- Base teas (4.2 oz incl. blending allowance): about $3.15
- Botanicals: about $0.85
- Tin: about $0.95
- Label + seal: about $0.25
$5.20 all-in before your blending time: $16 retail is a 68% margin. The pouch version packs for $0.60 less; offering both is a deliberate margin choice, not just a style one. Weigh every component into the recipe (including the rose petals added by eye) and consistency becomes provable.
Curate the lineup by the numbers
Eight flavors is a shelf; eighteen is botanical chaos. Sales by blend show which teas earn their place: most blenders find a handful of core flavors carry the revenue while the long tail ties up inventory. SKU sprawl is a tea-shop disease; rotate seasonals through a stable core instead, and let what sells decide.
The formula for tea
- Weighed leaf + botanicals + tin/pouch + label + blending time + margin
- Specialty blends commonly retail at ~3× materials. Our tin at $16 sits right on it
- Wholesale and bulk: the same blend in a bulk bag has different packaging math: cost it as its own variation
- When a botanical spikes (vanilla, anyone?), the recipe shows exactly which blends absorbed the hit
Tea pricing mistakes to avoid
- 'To taste' botanicals off the books: weigh them once, recipe them forever
- Averaging the tin across products: the sampler pouch and the gift tin are different economics
- A flavor lineup that grows but never prunes: shelf space is margin space
- Copying supermarket tea prices: mass-blended isn't your category
Set recipes, counted botanicals, packaging priced in: Keepsel for tea blenders keeps every flavor's true cost current. Steep your own numbers through the free pricing calculator.