After 17 years, Talley's -- one of the first home-grown stores in Charlotte to cater to vegetarians, vegans and the health-conscious -- is closing, reports The Charlotte Observer.

Health food shoppers are part of Talley's problem. Increasingly, consumers are turning to a wider array of specialty stores, many of them bigger and able to offer more products at lower prices.

The 14,500-square-foot store has been hard hit since Asheville-based Earth Fare opened a SouthPark store last summer, President Marc Friedland told the Observer. "We just didn't have the resources to build the business back up," said Friedland, 58, who doesn't know what he'll do next. Talley's will close once its current inventory is sold.

With two new Trader Joe's already here and a third opening later this year, and Whole Foods coming in 2009, competition is only getting stiffer.

"I can't wait for Whole Foods," said Dan Ascher, a pastoral counselor who was shopping at Talley's to take advantage of the 25 percent markdowns. "They have a much bigger variety."

Growth nationally of bigger specialty foods stores, such as Whole Foods, has edged out independents or made them work harder to keep customers, said Charles Stahler, co-director of the Vegetarian Resource Group in Baltimore.

The competition doesn't end there.

Traditional groceries, such as Harris Teeter, and warehouse clubs, such as Sam's and Costco, are offering more organic produce, hormone-free meat and soy milk. And some former staples of natural foods stores, such as Tom's of Maine toothpaste and Bert's Bees skin-care products, now line shelves of big supermarkets and discount retailers, and can be bought online, too.

The newspaper interviewed loyal Talley's shopper Ann Stanley who admitted she buys organic food at Harris Teeter.

"I'm sad," said Stanley, who stopped in Thursday to get EnviroKidz Gorilla Crunch cereal for son Mason, 2½. "But I understand that these other organic groceries are putting them out of business."

Then she went back to loading juice boxes into the kid-sized cart Mason pushed down emptying aisles.