They come in pairs, and alone. Some bring their children. A few have heard about this place through friends, although most just saw the sign outside and stumbled in, incredulous that they can finally get their fix without having to make a run for the border.

Over the hour that I spend in this shop, 22 people walk through the door and only three leave empty-handed. A woman clutching a brown paper bag full of just-purchased items pauses on her way out.

“Don’t expose him,” she says. “I’m fearful he’s going to get shut down.”

The proprietor, Mike Hallatt, has asked this reporter not to reveal the exact location of his store, which carries goods from a particular U.S. grocery chain known for its huge array of low-priced organic items and Hawaiian-shirt wearing staff.

It’s a company known to be extremely secretive and selective about where it opens new stores – and it has not licensed or otherwise sanctioned Hallatt to sell its products here.

“There’s a reason we’re disguised as a Romanian bakery,” he says. “This is not supposed to be happening.”

But with so much pent-up demand, Hallatt figured that somebody had to do it. So, on a regular basis (he won’t say how often) he or one of his “secret shoppers” make a trip to Bellingham or Seattle to stock up. Since he opened for business in January, his grateful customer base has been growing.

A woman pushing two little girls in a double-wide stroller rolls in. Her name is Laurie Proskin, and she says she makes regular trips to the states to shop for these organic products.

“So do all my friends,” she says. “And if they go, they get me stuff. Anywhere else, you’re going to pay more.”

“Chocolate-covered cherries!” she exclaims, reaching for the last package. “This would be, like, ten bucks at Whole Foods!”

Here the 340 gram package of organic chocolate cherries goes for $6.09. Cans of organic sliced tomatoes are $1.99. Twelve ounces of gluten-free granola? $4.49.

Hallatt claims to not mark anything up more than a dollar from the retail price that he pays.

“Is it sustainable to drive to Bellingham or Seattle or wherever and schlep this stuff back?" He ponders the question for a brief moment. “I hope so.”

But the more important question in his mind is, why in a supposedly free economy, it should be so hard to do what he’s doing. And why do groceries cost so much in Canada than in the U.S. anyway? He doesn’t have those answers either.

Hallatt is acutely aware that his business is “fraught with uncertainties” and seems unconcerned that it might not pan out. “I don’t need to do this,” he says. “It’s not the highest and best use of my time."

In the meantime, at least he appears to be having a good time of it. He doesn’t work at the store so much as hold court here. Tall, clad in a grey cape and matching cap, he chats jovially with every customer and is constantly opening bags of treats to pass around.

One customer buys a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, puts them in her bag, then immediately pulls them out when Hallatt mentions he hasn't sampled those before.

"Try some!" she says to Hallatt, who pours the beans out onto a plastic lid before taking a sample. ("Health rules," he explains.)

He offers roasted almonds to a well-dressed couple, a man and a woman, who look to be in their 50s.

“We’re looking for chips…the kind with no salt and three kinds of potatoes?” she says.

Hallatt hasn't got any, but he's doing a big shop, soon.

He encourages his customers to think of his store merely as a “bridge” to the authentic Trader Joe's shopping experience. “I’m no substitute for a trip to Bellingham," he says. “Go, get stocked up and if you run out of something, come here.”

“We’ll come back,” the woman says, and then turns to her partner and shakes her head. “I just got so hooked on those things.”