When you set your table with china and silver, when you sink bright flowers into a favorite vase filled with cold water, when you stir-fry edamame and tofu, grill a marinated flank steak, toss pepper-scented arugula leaves with sprays of lemon and drizzles of olive oil, you have an expectation: to gather around the table in precise splendor, everyone eager for an approachable taste of something to transform that moment into a long-held memory.

To include everyone you care about.

I want Hiller’s to be an apt partner in the way you live. Because it’s all about finding a way to make our lives meaningful and relevant. I honor your lifestyle choices in the way I stock my stores.

The average grocery seeks to fulfill basic needs – milk and bread, potatoes and meat. Quality, special needs, preference, they don’t factor into the discussion. It’s a business, a bottom-line driven quest to make money while expending as little as possible. Gather the most commonly consumed items under a rack of fluorescent lights and high ceilings and the people will come.

That’s not me.

Hiller’s shelves are filled with the ways we choose to live.

Lifestyle, a word coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929, refers to the simple way a person lives, a way of going about one’s days, a carefully constructed, sometimes not even consciously, framework for existence.

Existence is complicated, you know, and therein lies the challenge for a grocery man like me.

You seek to exist but your religion dictates you eat only meat ritually slaughtered under the watchful eye of a rabbi.

You seek to exist but your body rejects refined sugars.

You seek to exist in harmony with your ancestors – you need ghee to make your grandmother’s mudda pappu-avakai-neyyi, you desire mole for that favorite roasted turkey with masa stuffing and chile gravy your cousin made when you last visited, you want high-quality fish and exquisite sheets of nori to roll sushi like you did when you lived in Japan.

Another grocery offers the bare essentials: a few boxes of tasteless diabetic products; kosher items by default like frozen Lender’s bagels; disappointing, brown-edged lettuce and too-soft grapefruits; watery salsa and stale taco shells to satisfy cravings for authentic cuisine.

Our choices define us. Lifestyle is far-reaching. It’s how we decide whom to interact with, what entertainment we enjoy, the flavor and hue and spice of taste. Lifestyle is the current that rocks the waters of our lives.

Sometimes you have no choice but to live a certain way – your stomach roils when you consume dairy or wheat, so you seek gluten-free, casein-free, additive-free foods. In most places, it’s oh-so-hard to find what you need.

Hiller’s is a place where you find everything on your list plus even more items you want to try. A place that supports your right to choose how you live. A place that listens to you.

Hiller’s is your partner in living the way you must.

The reason Hiller’s is different from all the other groceries is because I recognize that habits, attitudes, values and tastes have everything to do with getting through the day.

Whether imposed or chosen, lifestyle choices make living manageable. They define who we are and how we go about our tasks, how we face trials, how we weather disappointments, how we celebrate moments.

So go ahead and set your table; make it shine. Slice strawberries and toss them with chopped nuts and balsamic vinegar. Grill a thick cut of halibut. Roast sweet potatoes. Make sure your glasses sparkle, your silver gleams, and each guest is seated beside someone who will enlighten their mind and strengthen their spirit. It’s the way you live. Nothing is more important.