We’re delighted to introduce you to our brand new Community Partner in Metro-Vancouver . . .

Choices Markets is Western Canada’s largest local retailer of natural, organic and specialty foods.  Originally opened in 1990, Choices is proud to be celebrating 25 years as a local, 100% BC family owned and operated grassroots grocer committed to its customers, communities and planet. We’re delighted that Choices will begin to distribute CSF member shares starting in March 2016!

In 2015, we began to look for ways to offer convenient pick-up locations for our members who live a little farther away from the False Creek Fishermen’s Wharf. Choices seemed like an ideal, values-aligned partner with a lot of great locations around metro Vancouver. I knew that if I could get to know the folks at Choices, they would love to hear about our CSF and our unique distribution model. So, I began to ask around. Nicholas Scapillati, Executive Director at Farm Folk City Folk offered to introduce the idea to Choices CEO, Ishkandar Ahmed. As Nicholas said in our introduction, “distribution is one of the greatest challenges on our road to a more sustainable food system and has been a focus of FarmFolk CityFolk’s work the past few years.” Ishkandar was enthusiastic about our CSF and already knew all about us. He was eager to work together to help us provide convenient pick-up locations for our members.

After speaking with his staff, Ishkandar suggested we start by using their Marine Drive location as our first member pick-up spot. We had a tour of the store and met in person with Ishkandar as well as Rob Hunt, the Meat Manager and Toby Rogers, the store manager at the Marine Drive Store, and Steve Lockhart, Director of Retail Operations. They were all so enthusiastic about our values-alignment and about helping us connect our fishing families to our customers throughout BC! We’ve made arrangements for our first member pick-up at the Marine Drive store in March 2016 and the whole team at Choices is looking forward to meeting our members! We’re working on logistics of offering member pick-ups at as many of the 8 current Choices locations as possible so stay tuned for more details as they unfold!

The Community Partnership model is working beautifully for pick-up in locations across western Canada and we’re excited to have Choices come on board as a new partner this year! In addition to offering super-convenient pick-up locations, I know our members will enjoy having the opportunity to do a little shopping for great, ethical, local products while at Choices. As with all our Community Partners, Choices offers member pick-up service completely free of charge because they believe in what we are doing and want to help make food-systems change.

If you are in Burnaby, drop by and say hello to our friends at Choices!

Check our event calendar for details of all our BC pick-ups!