Yes! Organic Market on Baltimore Avenue in Hyattsville offers a large selection of wine and beer along with a wide aray of fresh produce.

Gary Cha hates the word “no.”

That’s why when he started a chain of all-natural organic food stores in the Washington area, he named his market Yes! to represent his openness to his customers’ unique tastes. The organic market doesn’t say “no” to anyone — whether the customer desires naturally sourced, vegan, ethnic or just unusual foods, said store worker and university student Rosemary Garcia.

With the help of several student workers at the store’s Arts District Hyattsville location, the market hopes to extend that can-do attitude to students from this university. If the store becomes an official campus sponsor, it plans to raise awareness about the importance of healthy, organic foods, promote the accessibility of Yes! Organic Market and hold healthy-eating events in dorms.

“When you first get to college, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, diner food’ and the freshman 15,” said Garcia, a junior chemical engineering major. “But nutrition is important, and it’s going to have an impact on your education, too. … I feel like a lot of students don’t even know the store’s there, even though it’s one of the closest grocery stores to campus.”

Eric Marshall-Main, a University of Maryland University College student and Facilities Management employee at this university, said he doesn’t shop at Yes! because MOM’s Organic Market is more accessible to where he lives.

“[Yes!] is just down Route 1, but it’s not even bikeable,” he said. “Most students don’t even have a car.”

Yes! is only about 2 miles from the campus, and the Shuttle-UM Hyattsville bus has a stop at the market. Still, university students make up less than 5 percent of Yes!’s customer base, even though the store offers a 10 percent discount for them, Garcia said.

So when Garcia began working at the store a few months ago, she was eager to spread the word to her friends.

When she visited the store for the first time “on a whim,” she said she had a blast shopping and chatting with a cashier.

“That kind of turned into us talking about why students don’t shop there anymore,” Garcia said. “I couldn’t believe it because if I had known this was here, I would’ve been shopping there for the past two years.”

Yes!, which opened in Hyattsville in 2011, sells its organic food in a brick building with a green awning on the corner of a tree-lined Route 1 stretch, down the street from Busboys and Poets.

Inside, sunny yellow walls, the scent of herbs, upbeat songs and racks of brightly colored produce welcome customers.

All of the market’s products are natural and have no preservatives or genetically modified organisms, store manager Dennis Pick said. The store caters to vegetarians, vegans and people with gluten or dairy allergies. Its offerings include fresh produce, sushi, cheeses, wines, natural oils, and organic coffee from around the world.

A wall of bulk bins displays everything from gingersnap and coconut-almond-flavored granola to dark chocolate-covered raisins, yogurt pretzels, raw, Hawaiian-flavored carob (“chunks of energy”) and organic dates rolled in coconut. Patrons can also fill their own jars of spices and herbs and buy organic body care products, including soaps, lotions, shampoos and even a Brazilian henna cream.

Garcia loves the Guinness-flavored ice cream, the sushi (She and her roommate can’t go in without buying an entire package), the aloe vera water and the grind-your-own almond or peanut butter section. Her three housemates make shopping at the market a sort of family trip, she said.

Because the store promotes local farmers and businesses, including a vegan bakery down the street, Garcia said, it’s a more sustainable option for students in a time when people are seriously considering their impact on the environment.

In a corner of the market near the wines and cheeses, Yes! employee Alex Robinson was setting up a small sampling counter of some of the market’s frozen foods: ready-to-serve Punjab eggplant, a Tasty Bite meal — one of several locally sourced Indian meals that have less salt than any other prepackaged entrees, Robinson said.

He hasn’t served samples to many University of Maryland students, he said.

“I think a lot of people don’t go [to Yes!] because it’s more expensive,” Robinson said. “But the quality more than compensates.”

At Yes!, a box of strawberries costs $4.49 and a single mango costs $2.49. Sweet potatoes are $2.49 a pound and 5 ounces of baby spinach costs $3.99. Some chocolate costs $3.99 or $4.29 — just for a single bar.

At the Downtown College Park Farmers Market on Sundays, vendors often offer lower prices: Some sell apples for $2.79 a pound, kale for $2.50 a bag and a dozen eggs for $3.50.

But Yes! offers many additional products, and Garcia said she’s found several products, such as Babybel cheese, at lower prices than at traditional supermarkets.

The food is delicious, too, Robinson said. Once, he gave his roommate — whom he called more of a “Little Caesars kind of guy” — a sloppy joe with Punjab eggplant rather than traditional toppings. He loved it and didn’t even notice the difference, Robinson said.

And Garcia raved about the store’s events, such as its weekly wine tastings and superb customer service.

“I saw this woman thinking of buying a bag of chips, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not really sure if I’d like them,’” Garcia said. “So the manager, Andy, he just ripped the bag open and was like, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have to buy it if you’ve never tasted it before.’”

“They’re the sweetest people, and that makes me excited to work for them and excited about what they’re doing,” Garcia said.

Since she began meeting with marketing representatives of both Stamp Student Union and Campus Recreation Services, Garcia hopes to begin tabling in Stamp and promoting Yes! on social media. She’s spoken with three resident assistants so far and hopes to hold T-shirt raffles, food tastings and informational sessions about healthy meals college students can make in their dorms or apartments.

“One idea I have is to make eggs in the microwave — that’s a healthy option, especially if you don’t have time to swing by the diner,” Garcia said.

La Plata Hall resident assistant William Achukwu, a senior government and politics major, said when he heard of Robinson’s plans, he was immediately on board. About a year ago, Achukwu decided to change his own diet to become healthier.

“Even before what you look like on the exterior — you obviously lose weight — [it’s] just the way you feel,” he said. “You feel a lot better eating the right kinds of food, as opposed to getting, what, 50 grams of fat from one Chick-fil-A sandwich.”

Achukwu said he thought the students in his residence hall would love learning about easily microwavable healthy meals.

College students would “eat it up, no pun intended,” he said.

Before the end of the semester, Garcia hopes to gain official approval as a campus sponsor. During finals week, she hopes students might stop by Yes! to grab something “fresh and healthy” instead of “heavens knows what” they eat as study snacks.

But if students just visit the store and see what it’s like, Garcia said she feels like her job will be done.

“It’s local, it’s organic, it’s sustainable, and I feel like for their cause, they’re also really committed to it,” she said. “Maybe I’m different from most people that I have fun when I go grocery shopping, but it is kind of a different experience entirely from your typical shopping. It’s not really a chore there; like, I enjoy myself the entire time I spend there.”