About
The Story Behind the Work
I learned the business from the inside — function by function.
I grew up in my father's store. Kardish was founded in Ottawa in 1979, and in 1984 my father — Michael Assaf — bought into the franchise and opened the Herongate Mall location. I spent my childhood there, stocking shelves, watching him help customers, learning without knowing it what it looks like to build something that matters to people.
Before I took over Kardish, I earned a Computer Systems Technician diploma from Algonquin College and a Commercial Real Estate qualification from OREA. Not because I had a master plan — because I wanted to understand how things actually worked.
In September 2005, at 25, I acquired the entire Kardish business — four struggling franchise locations generating about $2.5M annually. Over the next twenty years, I rebuilt it into something much larger and more complex than a health food chain.
I didn't follow a playbook. I built every function of it from the inside — alongside the teams I hired, trained, and trusted to run it with me, and alongside Melinda: my wife, and through the later chapters my business partner in every sense.
What I Built
Most people knew Kardish as a health food retailer. What it actually was took twenty years and five layers to build.
Building the Operations
A multi-location retail business. A fully integrated e-commerce platform. Category expansion into grocery, personal care, and a full vitamins and supplements department. Three different corporate headquarters and 12 store builds and renovations over twenty years. Site selection, lease negotiation, construction, supply chain, inventory systems — every operational decision was owned internally.
Building the Brand
A 130-product Kardish private label built from zero — product development, supplier sourcing, packaging design, pricing and promotion, regulatory compliance under Health Canada NHP licensing, in-store positioning, and staff education. All marketing in-house: brand strategy, PR, paid advertising, social media, and community partnerships. The result was a 4.9-star Google rating from 5,000+ customer reviews and a Best Ottawa Business Award.
Building the Technology
A Computer Systems Technician diploma applied directly to the business — building enterprise-level data infrastructure, business intelligence systems, and custom software applications at a scale most independent retailers either outsource entirely or skip altogether. Both the technical architecture and the business problems it had to solve were ours to figure out.
Building the Team
Hiring, training, and developing five distinct employee groups — store staff (the Wellness Advisor model: nutritionists, personal trainers, dietary specialists), warehouse, delivery, administration, and management. The Wellness Advisor program became a real competitive advantage. The OBJ Employee's Choice Award reflected the workplace we built together.
Leading the Industry
Six years on the Board of Canada's largest natural health products association — the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) — including two years as President — representing thousands of retailers, manufacturers, and distributors at the national level. That role took the work beyond a single business and into the policy, governance, and direction of an entire industry.
Featured in · Canadian Natural Health Retailer (cover story) · Business in Focus · Grocery Business · Health & Wellness Retailer
Where I Am Now
Kardish closed in August 2025 after 46 years as an Ottawa institution and 20 under my leadership. The closure was structural — driven by the same forces reshaping independent retail everywhere — and we handled it with care for our team and gratitude for the community that supported us for decades. The full story of what was built and how it ended is on The Kardish Story page.
Now I'm bringing twenty years of operating depth — and the AI fluency I've developed alongside it — into the next chapter. I'm actively looking for executive roles, board engagements, and operating advisory work where that combination creates real value.