Choices Markets is a Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

-based supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 chain that is Western Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

's largest retailer of natural and organic food

Organic food

Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.For the...

.

The chain has eight stores: seven in Metro Vancouver, including one rice bakery, and one location in Kelowna. Choices was founded in December 1990 by brothers Wayne and Lloyd Lockhart . The owners emphasize that the store caters to a range of diet

Diet (nutrition)

In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...

s, including Gluten free, vegetarian and vegan. Lockhart cites this is a guiding principle for the chain: "It's all about providing choice." .

The company has relied on various techniques aimed at increasing customer loyalty in order to compete with larger chains in the area, such as providing customers with loyalty cards  and providing an in-house nutritionist

Nutritionist

A nutritionist is a person who advises on matters of food and nutrition impacts on health. Different professional terms are used in different countries, employment settings and contexts — some examples include: nutrition scientist, public health nutritionist, dietitian-nutritionist, clinical...

to help advise customers.