How to decide what to charge for your vegan products and services

In brief

• Pricing is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as an ethical business owner. 
• Ethical commitments such as fair wages, sustainable materials, and responsible sourcing often increase costs. 
• Start by understanding your true costs, researching competitors, and naming the value customers receive. 
• Avoid pricing based on your own spending habits or fears about what people might think. 
• Regularly review and test your pricing to ensure it supports both your business goals and your values. 
• Good pricing isn’t about charging as much as possible. It’s about creating a financially sustainable business that can continue making a positive impact.

Most of us start an ethical business to solve a problem, support a cause, or make a positive difference in the world. Working out how to price products and services usually comes later and then quickly becomes central to almost every business decision.

Charge too little and you may struggle to cover your costs, pay yourself or your team properly, invest in growth, or weather difficult trading periods. Charge too much and you risk putting potential customers off before they’ve experienced the value of what you offer.

There isn’t a universal formula that tells you exactly what to charge. A vegan bakery, an animal sanctuary, a copywriter, a sustainable fashion brand, and a plant-based meal delivery service all face different costs, challenges, and customer expectations.

Why ethical businesses often face a different pricing challenge

Running an ethical business often comes with costs that mainstream competitors don’t have to consider.

You may choose suppliers based on working conditions rather than price, pay staff above minimum wage, use more sustainable packaging, or work with smaller producers whose values align with your own.

These decisions often increase costs.

This is one reason it isn’t always realistic to benchmark your prices against larger competitors. A multinational corporation buying tens of thousands of units at a time can negotiate prices that are simply unavailable to a small independent business.

Ethical businesses also face the challenge of selling to ethical consumers.

Research consistently highlights what’s known as the “attitude-behaviour gap“, which is when consumers support ethical products and businesses in principle, but their purchasing decisions don’t always reflect those beliefs. At the same time, research from PwC suggests that some consumers are willing to pay a “sustainability premium” of up to 9.7% more for products and services they perceive as environmentally or socially responsible.

Part of pricing successfully involves understanding where your customers sit on that spectrum. Are they primarily motivated by price? By convenience? By values? Or by some combination of all three?

Start by understanding your actual costs

Many business owners know roughly what something costs to produce. Far fewer know exactly what it costs to sell.

For product businesses, costs extend far beyond ingredients and packaging. Marketing, storage, payment processing, insurance, customer service, and website costs all need to be factored in.

Service businesses face a similar challenge. Client work often includes preparation, administration, meetings, training, software subscriptions, and professional development.

Your own time belongs on the list too.

A surprising number of founders calculate every expense except their own labour. If a product takes three hours to create, those three hours have a value. If a client project includes meetings, preparation, research, administration, and revisions, those activities need to be reflected somewhere in your pricing.

Without a clear understanding of costs, it becomes almost impossible to know whether a product or service is genuinely profitable.

What are similar businesses charging?

Once you understand your own costs, it’s worth looking at the wider market.

What are businesses like yours charging? Are you significantly above or below the average? If so, why? Being above or below the average doesn’t necessarily mean that your pricing is wrong, but it will be helpful to understand what’s driving the difference.

This isn’t about copying competitors. Your competitors may have different costs, suppliers, production methods, or target audiences.

But competitor pricing can provide useful context.

If most vegan consultants in your sector charge between £1,000 and £2,000 for a project and you’re charging £300, it’s worth investigating why. Equally, if you’re charging three times more than everyone else, customers will usually expect an obvious reason for the difference. What makes your service premium?

A useful exercise is to create a simple spreadsheet of five to ten comparable businesses. Note what they charge, what’s included, who they appear to be targeting, and how they position themselves in the market.

The goal isn’t to match their prices. It’s to understand the landscape in which you’re working.

It’s also worth remembering that comparable products don’t always require similar pricing. A premium vegan skincare brand and a supermarket own-brand alternative may both be selling cruelty-free products, but they’re often serving different audiences and solving different problems, and this justifies a price difference.

What are customers actually paying for?

People rarely buy products and services based solely on production costs.

Someone buying a vegan ready meal isn’t only paying for ingredients. They may be paying for convenience after a long day at work, reassurance that the product aligns with their values, flavour, nutrition, or simply the fact that dinner is sorted.

The same principle applies to services. A consultant might save a client months of trial and error. A designer may help a business appear more professional and attract more customers. A virtual assistant may free up hours every week that allow a founder to focus on growth.

One useful exercise is to make a list of every reason someone buys from you.

A vegan bakery may be providing taste, convenience, community, sustainability, and specialist dietary options. A consultant may be providing expertise, reassurance, accountability, and time savings.

The longer that list becomes, the easier it is to understand why pricing shouldn’t be based solely on costs.

Let’s take the example of Slutty Vegan, the US-based restaurant chain founded by Pinky Cole. The company charges prices that sit closer to gourmet burger restaurants than traditional fast-food outlets (think $18 for a burger and fries). Customers aren’t simply paying for the ingredients in a burger. They’re paying for the wider experience, including the branding, atmosphere, and sense of community surrounding the business.

It’s a useful reminder that people often evaluate the whole experience rather than simply comparing the cost of ingredients.

Who are you trying to serve?

Many pricing decisions become clearer once you’re specific about who you’re trying to reach.

Different groups of people make purchasing decisions for distinct reasons. Some care about price more than anything, perhaps because they have a limited budget, but others care more about convenience, expertise, quality, sustainability, or specialist knowledge.

A university student buying their first cruelty-free skincare products may have vastly different expectations from a professional in their forties looking for premium ingredients and environmentally responsible packaging.

Neither customer is wrong. They simply have different priorities.

The clearer you are about who your business exists to serve, the easier it becomes to make pricing decisions that reflect their needs and expectations.

Don’t let your assumptions set your prices

Many founders accidentally use their own spending habits as a pricing guide.

If you wouldn’t spend £150 on a consultation, £500 on a course, or £8 on a vegan ready meal, it can be tempting to assume nobody else would either.

But the reality is that your customers are not all versions of you. People have differing incomes, priorities, lifestyles, and motivations. What you view as expensive might seem like a bargain to someone else.

A more useful question is not, “Would I pay this?” or even “How much would I pay for this?”, but “Would my target customer consider this good value?”

It’s also worth separating pricing from personal worth.

Many business owners worry that charging more will make them appear greedy, arrogant, or out of touch. Others interpret every rejected proposal as evidence that they’re charging too much.

Feedback about your pricing should be viewed as information rather than a judgement about your worth as a human being.

If a potential customer says no, that doesn’t automatically mean the price is wrong. They may not currently have the budget or fully understand the value of the offer. They may never be the right customer, or they may simply not need what you’re selling right now.

There are many reasons why someone doesn’t make a purchase and it’s often not a pricing problem. 

The danger of competing on price

Many ethical businesses feel pressure to keep prices as low as possible to make their products or services more accessible.

The problem is that competing primarily on price often favours the largest businesses.

As we touched on earlier in this article, large corporations can buy in bulk, negotiate lower supplier costs, spread overheads across larger sales volumes, and absorb losses that would be unsustainable for smaller organisations.

Most independent businesses can’t win that race, but fortunately, they don’t need to.

Customers choose smaller businesses for many reasons. They may value expertise, personal service, transparency, specialist knowledge, community connections, product quality, or alignment with their values.

A race to the bottom on price can make it harder to invest in the very things that make your business distinctive.

Oat milk brand Oatly provides an interesting example here. Rather than positioning itself as the cheapest alternative to dairy, the company focused heavily on branding, environmental messaging, taste, and lifestyle positioning. Whether or not someone agrees with every aspect of Oatly’s approach, it shows that customers don’t always make purchasing decisions based on price alone. And, by holding firm on its pricing, Oatly has been able to invest extensively in improving its sustainability.

Are you charging enough to uphold your values?

Every ethical commitment you make in your business comes with a cost.

Fair wages, sustainable materials, responsible sourcing, and transparent supply chains all require investment. Some businesses choose to make those costs visible. Tony’s Chocolonely, for example, has long argued that addressing exploitation within the cocoa industry requires greater investment throughout the supply chain. Those commitments inevitably influence what consumers pay for the finished product.

Many ethical businesses, however, try to absorb additional costs themselves.

The result can be lower profits, longer working hours, founder burnout, or pressure to compromise on standards further down the line.

For some ethical businesses, the goal isn’t simply to sell products or services. It’s to show that it’s possible to run a business in a different way to the capitalist norm, for example, in a way that supports the circular economy.

That might mean designing products to last longer rather than making something that’s easy to dispose of or replace. It could involve offering repair, refill, or reuse schemes. It might mean collaborating with local suppliers, reducing waste, or investing in more sustainable production methods.

These approaches can increase costs in the short term, particularly when compared with businesses built around high-volume production and rapid consumption. Yet they may also create long-term value that needs to be communicated alongside the purchase price.

A product that lasts for ten years may cost more than one that lasts for two. A refillable system may require a larger upfront investment than a disposable alternative. In both cases, the customer may ultimately spend less money over time while generating less waste.

This creates an important pricing challenge for ethical businesses. The benefits of a more sustainable approach are often realised over months or years, while the higher purchase price is visible immediately.

Ask yourself:

• Does this pricing allow me to pay suppliers fairly?
• Does it allow me to pay myself fairly?
• Can I invest in improving my products or services?
• Can I maintain the ethical standards that matter to me?
• Could I still operate successfully if costs increased unexpectedly?

Financial sustainability and ethical principles are often presented as opposing forces, but in reality, they frequently depend upon one another. If your prices don’t support the values at the heart of your business, those values can become increasingly difficult to keep up over time.

Often, it pays to tell your customers the stories behind your products and why they’re priced at the level they are.

Different pricing approaches suit different businesses

There is no single pricing model that works for every organisation.

A sanctuary may rely on memberships and donations, while a consultant may charge project fees or retainers. A product business may use subscriptions, bundles, or tiered pricing.

Sometimes changing the pricing model has a bigger impact than changing the price itself.

The important thing is to choose a model that reflects how customers receive value and how your business generates revenue.

Test before making major pricing decisions

No spreadsheet, article, or business adviser can tell you exactly what your customers are willing to pay. At some point, you will need evidence from the market. 

You could:

• Introduce a premium package alongside your existing offer
• Trial a small price increase with new customers
• Bundle products together
• Offer different service levels
• Ask prospective customers why they decided not to buy

Many founders treat pricing as something that needs to be perfected before launch but for many successful businesses, pricing often improves through testing, observation, and adjustment. A decision based on real customer behaviour is usually more dependable than one based entirely on assumptions.

Pricing is not a one-time decision

Many founders spend weeks deciding on a price and then leave it unchanged for years. Meanwhile, supplier costs go up, inflation increases expenses, customer expectations evolve, and the business itself changes.

It’s important to get into the habit of reviewing your pricing regularly. This doesn’t mean you have to increase your prices every year regardless of circumstances. It just means that you’ll be better able to make informed decisions based on your current costs, customer feedback, demand, and business goals.

Building a business that lasts

Before finalising a price, ask yourself:

• Does this cover all my costs?
• Does it reflect the value customers receive?
• Is it realistic for the audience I’m trying to reach?
• Does it allow me to uphold my values?
• Does it leave enough margin to reinvest in the business?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, there may be more work to do.

Good pricing isn’t about charging as much as possible. It’s about charging enough to cover your costs, uphold your values, and build a business that can continue creating positive change for years to come.

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