[whpalmer4]

You can set up your Hardware store context to have a location of business search for Lowe's OR Home Depot OR Menard's, and then set up each of the subcontexts to search just for that particular chain or location. See Brian's initial post in this thread. Tasks that could be done equally well at any of the bunch would go in the top-level context, and ones where you had a strong preference would go in the lower-level context. The All Actions view at the top-level context would let you easily check the specific contexts for the other stores, too.

What you propose would have to be an option selectable on a per-context basis, as I think there are cases where you really wouldn't want it!