Creating Ethical Price Structures

Herbalist considers the prices of his herbs

Conversations about the cost of herbs come up frequently in clinical practice. For many practitioners, pricing herbal prescriptions is one of the most ethically fraught aspects of running an herbal business. This tension is understandable. We want to make herbs accessible. We want to make care affordable. And we also want to remain in integrity with our patients, especially when recommending formulas that may carry a meaningful price tag. At Root and Branch Medicinary, we believe the answer is not to avoid these conversations but to approach them clearly and openly, with thoughtful attention to our costs, our time, and our values.

Pricing strategy has always been a matter of practical concern, but in the current climate, it deserves renewed attention. The global herbal supply chain is under increasing pressure. Tarriffs, shipping disruptions, and raw material scarcity have all contributed to rising costs in recent years. Meanwhile, inflation and economic uncertainty have made patients more cost-conscious than ever. This dynamic has placed many practitioners in a difficult bind: how to keep herbs affordable for patients while still making the margins needed to sustain a clinical practice. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are principles worth considering.

First, practitioners should begin by understanding the actual cost structure involved in sourcing and dispensing herbs. Granules and bulk herbs vary in cost by species, origin, preparation method, and supplier. Once a base cost is determined, a markup is typically added to cover not only the cost of the goods but also the time and expertise required to write the formula, manage inventory, consult with patients, pay labor expenses for staff or support people, and keep the herbal pharmacy running smoothly. This is where many clinicians hesitate. It’s common to worry that charging a significant markup makes us look greedy or unethical—but in reality, a fair markup is often what allows the business to remain viable. Profit is not the same as greed. Profit is what allows a business to weather lean periods, invest in better infrastructure, and pay the practitioner (and their staff) a reasonable wage.

In addition to understanding cost structure and margins, it's also useful to consider the context of your clinic—specifically, your location and your patient population. The income range and healthcare expectations of patients in a large urban center may differ significantly from those in a smaller town or rural area. If your patients routinely express financial difficulty or you serve a community with high levels of economic insecurity, that may warrant additional creativity in your pricing model—perhaps through sliding scale consultations or occasional discounts for frequent formulas. But those accommodations should be exceptions, not baselines. The core of your pricing model still needs to be built on foundational business realities: your cost of goods sold (COGS), your time, your staff, your rent, your software, and your need to earn a living.

One mistake we commonly see is when practitioners assume their patients cannot afford herbs and set prices based on imagined limits. While it is good to be aware of the general income levels in your patient population, it presumes too much to decide what someone else can or cannot afford. It is your job to set prices that reflect your actual business needs, and then allow the patient to make an informed decision. Undercharging from a place of assumption may feel generous, but it often leads to practitioner burnout, resentment, or clinic financial instability. Transparent, consistent pricing paired with genuine conversation about costs when needed tends to build more trust than quiet discounting. In fact, the more consistently you charge prices that reflect your revenue demands, the more stable your business becomes and the easier it is to be generous when the need arrises.

However, many practitioners don’t want to manage a medicinary at all. The logistics of sourcing, inventory, labeling, and dispensing are time-consuming and often require more space and energy than small practices can sustain. This is where systems like ours come in. At Root and Branch Medicinary, our practitioner portal allows licensed providers to create and submit formulas online, which we then prepare and ship directly to the patient. Our software includes a tool that lets practitioners set a private markup on each formula. This markup is not visible to the patient, and we collect it on your behalf and remit it to you as cash (less credit card processing fees) when the total dollar amount reaches a certain threshold. This feature allows you to earn income on your herbal expertise without needing to physically manage herbs in your own clinic.

We’ve found this model works particularly well for clinicians who value herbs as part of their therapeutic approach but don’t want to deal with the complexity of running a full herbal pharmacy. It allows you to treat herbs like any other form of clinical labor—something that takes skill, time, and professional judgment, and which deserves appropriate compensation.

Ethical pricing is not about finding a magical number that no one could possibly object to. It’s about building a system that reflects your actual costs, your clinical labor, your business model, and your patient relationships. It’s also about honesty—being clear with yourself about what it takes to sustain your work and being clear with your patients about what their options are. At Root and Branch Medicinary, we support that clarity by offering reliable pricing, clean interfaces, and fair systems that honor the practitioner’s role in making herbal medicine accessible, sustainable, and professionally viable.