Ishkandar Ahmed is in a quandary.
The Choices Markets CEO has the good fortune to operate the two grocery stores in Vancouver best positioned to start selling alcohol, but he does not want to remove anything from his stores to make way for liquor sales.
"If I create a store within a store, I need to build walls around it and have a door and a separate cashier," he said between sips of tea at a Starbucks across the street from his Cambie Street location. "That takes up a lot of space."
Two of Ahmed's stores are more than one kilometre away from a liquor store. That's a key distance because, once the B.C. government's new liquor changes take effect, it enables Ahmed to buy any of B.C.'s 630 private liquor licences, and move that licence to those grocery stores – all without having to seek the approval of any existing liquor store operator.
The remaining 51 grocery stores in the city of Vancouver – including two more Choices locations – are all too close to an existing liquor seller to do that.
Ahmed would far prefer that all grocers be able to simply sell B.C. wine in the grocery aisles. That would be more convenient for shoppers, be a more efficient use of space and require less investment.
Selling liquor is not the biggest challenge Ahmed is grappling with, however.
A bigger risk to his bottom line is grocery chain consolidation and the clout it gives big players, such as Sobeys, to press suppliers into providing a retroactive 1% discount and a promise not to raise prices.
"We haven't gone to our suppliers and said, 'Give us a 1% discount,' because we don't think it's fair," Ahmed said. "It has to be a win-win situation and to ask for a discount retroactively does not make sense."
He has asked suppliers to not raise prices for Choices if they are not raising prices for other clients.
Ahmed has a leg up on other grocery store executives when it comes to understanding the mindset of suppliers.
He joined father Sadru Ahmed and second cousin Salim Ahmed as a principal and the founding managing partner at the import-export company Jentash Marketing in 1985.
Jentash's initial focus was selling gourmet foods, but it soon started specializing in natural products that had no MSG or preservatives, and then in organic foods when those started becoming more available.
Clients included Capers Community Market, which has evolved to become part of Whole Foods Market. Jentash also supplied food to Choices after founders Wayne Lockhart and brother Lloyd Lockhart opened their first location on West 16th Avenue in 1990.
"You can be sure that the distributors and other suppliers are pushing back at Sobeys really hard," Ahmed said. "Some are saying, 'No,' and getting a lot of support."
Suppliers who cave and provide Sobeys with a 1% discount will find ways to claw that discount back, he added.
Instead of spending $10,000 on flyer advertising, they might spend $9,000, Ahmed said. Or, instead of having a promotion at Sobeys four times a year, they will hold it three times per year.
"If they're forced to swallow the price cuts, they will find it elsewhere – either in the other discounts or in the marketing budget," he said.
That's what Jentash would have done until 1999, when Ahmed and his partners sold their equal stakes in the venture to PriceCo, which is now part of KeHE Distributors' subsidiary Tree of Life Canada.
Following that transaction, Choices bought Jentash's former warehouse, which PriceCo did not need, and Salim Ahmed became a partner in Choices.
The other two Jentash principals – Ahmed and his father – signed non-compete clauses with PriceCo. Ahmed worked at PriceCo for three years to ensure a smooth transition. He then got the entrepreneurial itch and founded a consulting company in 2002.
The venture, however, remained a one-man operation.
So, when his wife, Gisele, was offered a significant Ottawa-based job as senior vice-president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2004, it made sense for the two to move to the nation's capital along with newborn son Marcel.
Ahmed continued consulting, including some work with Choices.
So, he was a natural choice to take over, in February 2013, from Choices' former CEO, Mark Vickars, who decided to retire after his wife won $25 million in a lottery.
"I'm hoping that we can open a new store in each of the next five years," Ahmed said. "I want to get to 15 stores."
Yet he stresses that Choices' aim is not to grow too big too fast. There will be no IPO with proceeds earmarked for rapid expansion. Nor will there be a sale to a conglomerate.
The company might buy independent grocers' outlets if the price and location are right.
But otherwise, Ahmed is content to run a boutique chain of grocery stores as well as the company's 15-year-old Choices' gluten-free bakery on Cambie Street.
"You can tell when you talk to Ishkandar that this is somebody who is passionately committed to what he is doing," said former B.C. premier Mike Harcourt, who has known Ishkandar for years through friends.
"We had dinner together at Bishop's, [my wife] Becky and me and Ishkandar and Gisele. He was so excited to describe the changes he's introducing and the growth plans he has."
Originally from Africa, Ahmed left Uganda in 1972 and after six months in England arrived in Canada as a 14-year-old with his parents. He graduated from Queen's University with an honours bachelor degree in physiology and biochemistry in 1981 and aspired to be a doctor.
Somehow life got in the way.
He worked to save money for medical school, went travelling and volunteered for the Aga Khan Foundation, doing public relations for a hospital and medical school in Karachi.
"That's the way life is," he said above the din of the loud coffee house. "You go down a path and something else catches your interest. You think, 'I'm enjoying this,' and you keep going." •
