There are 3 levels of upgrades for the runners.

Runners and Tower ? / Very low success rate with Fanny Blossom?

You can buy some ingredients from merchants, but their inventories only reset once each time you level, so you can't build up a huge supply that way. If you collect minerals and plants as you explore, the runners and merchants can fairly easily fill in any ingredients you may be lacking, but if not, trying to get by on just runners or merchants.