How to Price Tea Blends (The Tin Costs More Than You Think)
A $16 tin of tea holds $4 of leaf and $1.20 of packaging. Price blends from weighed recipes and the margin steeps properly.
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 — $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
Locked recipes, counted botanicals, packaging priced in — Hivara for tea blenders keeps every flavor's true cost current. Steep your own numbers through the free pricing calculator.
Put your numbers to work
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