Health Wise...just celebrated its 20th anniversary and is about to get bigger & better

Julie Beaver, the store manager of Health Wise in Welland, ON, has a funny story she likes to tell.  “I remember an elderly man walking by and poking his head in our store and saying, ‘Why would anyone ever need a store this big that sells hippie food?’  His prediction was that we would be out of business in two months.”...

Lucy Miller's career as the owner of the Healthy Hut health food store almost ended before it ever really got going. All is well now, but it wasn't without the type of challenges that make some people throw their hands up in frustration and walk away.
Within the first year of buying an underperforming health food store in Cochrane, Alberta in 2003, Lucy had some serious obstacles tossed into her path. For example, after only a year into the venture, she was told she'd have to move (in the middle of winter), as her lease wasn't being renewed."..." Read More

It was the spring of 2006 when Dennis Schroeder and his daughter Leane Harasymchuk engineered a major move, taking their store Good ‘n’ Natural from a 1,000 sq. ft. downtown strip mall location in Steinbach MB to a new, larger 2,700 sq. ft. space on a high traffic corner across town.  (CNHR Sept-Oct 2006)

Operating in a general trading area of roughly 30,000, which includes towns surrounding Steinbach, Good ‘n’ Natural was also to some degree competing against natural stores in Winnipeg, just a 40 minute drive to the north and west.  Prior to the move, many steps were taken by Leane and Dennis to visit other natural stores across the country and to also get the pulse of their customers, asking what they’d like to see in the soon-to-be created location.