> I guess my first question is how can I feed the maps a search query
> like find "Walgreens"

You can't.  Maps is maps ; the closest it comes to 'search' is the
geocoder, which will find addresses.  It won't find business names.

Google do provide a Local Search tool that you can integrate with maps
   http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/local.html
and this will find some businesses if it knows about them.  It won't
be able to distinguish which ones stock your product though.  It has
limitations on the number of results returned (which needn't be a
problem for "find the nearest" type of use).  It doesn't provide
multiple searches e.g. Walgreens or Sally or Bloggs, you'd need to
search for each consecutively and blend the results.  All do-able but
more complex and slower.

If there's any way you can maintain your own stockist list there are
well known examples using your own data.
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/phpsqlsearch_v3.html

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