quote:

The idea, when stated simply, doesn't exactly inspire scream "grocery empire." Yet that's just what became of the maritime-themed specialty market that Joe Coulombe first opened in 1967 in Pasadena, Calif. — which, in the decades that followed, blossomed into a web of hundreds of locations in dozens of states.

On Friday, more than three decades after he retired from the chain that still bears his name, Coulombe died in Pasadena at the age of 89. The company confirmed his death to NPR in an email Saturday.