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Feargal Quinn is in no rush to get to the point. It's Monday, the only day of the week that he spends in the nondescript suite of offices on the outskirts of Dublin that constitutes the "support office" of Superquinn, the supermarket chain he founded 40 years ago. Quinn has leadership lessons to teach, but right now he has stories to tell.

Which is most welcome, because to hear a story told by Quinn, a compact Irishman with silver hair and dancing blue eyes, is to settle into the front row of a performance that has been given many times, but that still imparts valuable secrets.

"If you've got the chance to be born again," he says with a wink, "do your best to be born into a family that runs a holiday camp. It's a smashing way to grow up -- and a smashing business education." That's how Quinn grew up, of course. He spent school breaks at his father's Red Island holiday camp just outside Skerries on the coast of northern County Dublin, working as a waiter, page boy, bingo caller -- whatever the day called for. What he was really doing was soaking up insights and experiences that formed the core of a leadership philosophy that is at once folksy and radical.

The most vivid takeaway for the young Quinn was his father's policy of charging guests up front for their entire holiday. "It was set up so that no matter how hard we worked to give our guests a great experience, we wouldn't increase our profit from their stay," says Quinn. "The only way we could judge our success was if the guests came up to my father and said, 'Mr. Quinn, I had a great holiday. I'm rebooking for next year.' Every single thing we did was centered on one overriding aim: to get people to come back. I learned that if you look after getting repeat business, profit will largely take care of itself. When faced with any business decision, any call on your time or resources, you need to ask, What will this do to help bring the customer back?"

Quinn's tireless and inventive exploration of that question has earned him a reputation as Ireland's "pope of customer service." In 1960, he opened his first shop in Dundalk, when he was 23. Today, he is the executive chairman of a 5,600-person, 19-store chain of supermarkets (estimated annual sales: $700 million). For Superquinn's relatively tiny size (its fiercest competitor, the British chain Tesco, has $30 billion in annual revenue), its brand, impact, and ambition are remarkable.

Over the years, Superquinn has worked with exclusive suppliers to create a range of "destination products" dear to Irish palates, including a custom-designed potato and made-to-order sausages. Superquinn is piloting some of the world's most advanced retail technology, including self-scan shopping, multifunction kiosks, digital shelf labels, and mobile checkout technology. Superquinn's most celebrated features are its lowest-tech innovations -- from professionally staffed child-care centers to complimentary umbrellas at the door. Superquinn inspires such intense devotion that many customers say that they drive out of their way -- and past several of its bigger competitors -- to shop there. That translates into market leadership for the privately owned company in its greater-Dublin base, and 9% of Ireland's $11 billion grocery business. (Quinn, his wife, and their five children control 95% of the company's assets.)