The Chains That Bind (or, How Many People Can I Piss Off This Time?)

Story time, kiddies!  Once upon a time, there were two natural foods stores in Texas.  The couple who ran one of them actually lived at the store for a while after being evicted for storing foodstuffs in their apartment.  Rather than compete with each other for business, they decided to join forces and create a natural foods supermarket.  The supermarket was 10,500 square feet and started with 19 employees.  Believe it or not, that was pretty big compared to most of their ilk at the time.  Less than a year had gone by when a flood basically destroyed the uninsured store.  In most cases, the whole thing would have been a huge loss, but customers, neighbors and friends pulled together to clean the place up.  Vendors and creditors cut them some slack as well, and the store re-opened mere weeks later.  Over the next few years, the supermarket grew more popular and financially stable.  Eventually, expansion was inevitable; first into other cities, and then into other states.  Other natural foods stores were absorbed, and other natural foods chains.  Exposure grew through partnerships, including ones with foodie television shows.  The little supermarket that could eventually became something of a benchmark of the natural foods juggernaut, a trend that shows no signs of stopping.  Have you figured out who I'm talking about yet?