Low-carb popularity is putting one founder out of business; tiny chain cannot compete with corporate food giants

• Elizabeth Harris was in the early stages of labor when she saw the sales figures that told her that her other creation, the Low Carb Mall, was in deep trouble.
• "Now when I look back, and look at November and December of 2003, we did real good compared to what we're doing now," Harris said, standing in her flagship Tempe store wearing the bright red and blue polo shirt with the Low Carb Mall logo.
• Pink signs dotted throughout the store shouted that the jars of low-carb pasta sauce and tubs of soft-serve ice cream were 60 percent off.
• Sales have slimmed so sharply that Harris is closing up shop.
• It was a place where they could purchase bran fiber bread and soy pretzels and escape the ridicule the Atkins diet suffered among the general population.
• Major corporations started making low-carb versions of food products, and grocery stores devoted shelves to them.
• Harris was hoping to cash in on a growing lifestyle; instead, she was ruined when it became a fad.
• While commuting to Pace University in Manhattan, where she was pursuing her master's degree in business administration, Harris listened to Atkins' radio show on WOR-AM.
• She came out to Arizona in 1999 after getting a job with Stevia, a Mesa company that manufactures an herbal dietary supplement that low-carb devotees use as a sugar substitute.
• Harris figured that she would appeal to the "grass-roots people," who were already devoted to the Atkins lifestyle.
• The story reported on how science was slowly beginning to embrace Atkins' concepts.
• "Big people" would come in and get stacks of low-carb chocolate bars.
• Over that next year, grocery stores started stocking low-carb products and restaurants and food manufacturers started producing Atkins-friendly meals.