What you're saying about generational differences in business is often very true, although not always - some companies, there's been family members dedicated to the company through hundreds of years, but even in that case, it sometimes only takes one generation with no interest in the business other than $$$ to bring a swift downfall.
In the case of Earth Fare, I think there's at least one more factor at play, in addition to what Meme said about grocery margins being so small - back in '75 when they first started, the
only place you could find natural and organic foods was at a health food/natural food store. Regular grocery stores simply didn't carry organics back then. The natural food stores were mostly very small, privately owned stores. Unless you lived in a very large city, it was unusual to ever find more than one or two in your area, so when Earth Fare first started, it was a unique business - still a very niche market at that time, but interest in organics and natural foods was just beginning to really take off.
That's all changed, and in part it's due to stores such as Earth Fare expanding and opening additional stores - I read that they had stores all through the southeast, and midwest. But then enter Whole Foods, which has even more stores, in more areas of the country. Sure, they have excessively high prices (they don't have the nickname Whole Paycheck for nothing), but for those who aren't too limited on funds, a place to find all the organics and natural foods they needed under one roof - why bother to make a trip to a small, privately owned store with an extremely limited stock, if you had the choice of a store with everything you needed? So that's what led to the growth of natural food stores like Earth Fare and Whole foods.
I think what really hurt them the most though is that over the last couple of decades, practically every regular grocery store has noticed the trend towards natural and organic foods, and started selling organic foods. The store where I worked had two aisles devoted exclusively to organic and natural foods. (rather large store for this area, really long aisles) The organic aisles had their own dairy case, and frozen cases. But in addition to that, many brands of organic items which were not stocked in those two aisles were stocked throughout the rest of the store - more organic juices in the juice aisle, organic meats in the meat dept, more organic frozen foods in the frozen aisles, more organic dairy in the dairy area, etc. Corporate often talked about expanding the organic area to a third aisle, which was already almost 1/2 bulk foods (nuts, seeds, dried fruit). I doubt that if/when they expand the organic to 3 aisles it would mean moving all the organics from the rest of the store into that aisle though - they have their own store brand line of natural and organic foods in every department, a line of goods which they were expanding all the time. All in all, there's probably already as much (or maybe even more) products labeled organic and natural in that store as you'd find in our local Whole Foods.
It's not just that particular store though - every chain store in this area has more and more organics all the time. Even Aldi has a fairly good selection of organics for such a small store. The smaller, privately owned stores have organics too - something you didn't see much of 30 years ago, and never saw 40+ years ago.
Because all the chain stores now sell a variety of organics, there are very few privately owned organic stores remaining in this area - the only ones I know of that are doing really well are the ones owned by Amish families. The others are dying off because they can't compete with large grocery stores that have more organics in a couple aisles than they have in their entire store. One of the main reasons the amish stores are still doing well is that they have such low operating expenses compared to chain stores of any kind. Their prices are still higher than at a chain store, but that's primarily because they don't have the wholesale price negotiating power of a chain. Even so, they're still doing well because they're knowledgeable about their products, have a built in repeat clientele (the Amish are more likely to shop Amish stores - more convenient, since their stores are located right on their farms, with farms all around them), and of course it doesn't hurt their business that once tourists hear that there's an Amish store nearby, they're all agog about shopping at a store owned by Amish.
But I digress... With Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, and the wholesale buying power of a behemoth like Amazon, they've been able to cut the prices a bit on some of the things they sell at Whole Foods, so even the price differential is not as much of an issue as it was. (I can't imagine Earth Fare was in any way able to compete with that kind of wholesale buying power)
Then there's online ordering - you can get a large selection of organic shelf stable items right off Amazon, and pretty much any organics you want online, including meats and other refrigerated items from local stores that offer online ordering with curb pickup or delivery. However you shop, whether online or in person, you're still more likely to go with a store that offers everything you need at the best price. Was Earth Fare large enough to provide that advantage? With 1/4 of the stores of Whole Foods, lacking the price negotiating power of Amazon, and competition from every other store offering online ordering, I somehow doubt it.
Since Earth Fare is closing because they went bankrupt, I doubt their financial difficulties started within the last year or two - I would imagine it's been going on for quite a while, and they just didn't see any way to recoup their losses. (I haven't seen yet what exactly they're blaming it on, but there can be all kinds of reasons for a business going under - there was one locally owned bank here that had to sell out to a large chain of banks several years back - one of their banking officers had embezzled so much money that they had no other option) They're not the only store to go out of business recently either - I know of several national chain stores in all types of retail businesses in this area who have gone bankrupt in the last several years - most of them just in the last few months.
Sorry to be so wordy - I feel bad about them going out of business (even though I'd never even heard of them before the news came out that they were going out of business), I just wanted to point out that there could very well be other factors involved.
He uses a 1 Tbsp measuring spoon to measure the coffee into the filter of the coffee maker... it's not just a well rounded measuring Tbsp, it's piled up as high as he can get it without spilling the grounds all over - and he uses 3 of those for a mug of coffee. 
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