Once upon a time there was a small buying club operating in Prescott called Magpie Buying Club organized by Margaret Mendoza and Pat Pierson. Over time, we got out of the garage and into our own storefront. The small biz located in downtown Prescott, Arizona --Magpie Natural foods-- later emerged as Magpie-Herbswest which tied our website together with our brick & mortar storefront.
That was over a decade ago. Now that my long time partner Pat Pierson has retired, I have decided to emphasize more on herbal medicines and less on a "regular" natural foods grocery store.

About Margaret Mendoza I have been interested in health foods since I was a young mother.  I practiced holistic medicine for myself and my family.  In 1985, while raising my family I worked for a health food store in Prescott, Arizona, where I handled the herb department and continued my studies.  Then one day, in 1991 I began a class in T'ai Chi Chuan where I met my future partner Pat Pierson...in 1992 we decided to open a buying club for natural foods, in 1994 we opened our storefront. In 1995 I met my second T'ai Chi Chuan teacher Sifu David Champ, who was also a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. He was my guide and inspiration to start bringing in the TCM Patent herbal formulas into our small business.

Pat and I spent the next 14 years working together slowly building our business and raising our families and grandbabies. Well, Pat has recently retired this year in 2007. I have continued on working and exploring ways to best serve the ever changing community in Prescott. At this time many changes are taking place and a new fresh look is in the horizon.

With this fresh perspective, I decided to change the name of my store. It has now morphed into "One Root Tea & Herbothecary". My growing focus is on the world of tea and on cutting edge healing herbs, tonics and TCM patent formulas. Today I service many of the alternative doctors in my community as an "herbal pharmacy" or "herbothecary", if you will. While I still service the "Magpie Buying Club" and offer all my wonderful world wide web customers the herbal patents through this website Herbswest, I continue to expand on my love of teas--so a little tea room is in the plans. I will keep you posted on my progress

A word on the TCM patents: Over the years I have witnessed many positive results that Traditional Chinese Medicine has provided for my customers, prompting the expansion of our inventory into one of the largest retailer of patented Traditional Chinese formulas in Arizona.

We are committed to offering these Traditional Chinese products and other hand picked herbal formulas and supplements through the extension of this web site Herbs West*.  Please watch for more excellent products that we hope to present to you, our online customers.

* Why "Herbs West"?  Because we are delivering to western people, eastern medicinal herbs.