PA'IA, Maui — The landmark Nagata Store here is closing at the end of the month after more than 70 years in business.

The small grocery store grew up with Maui's sugar cane fields and plantation camps. But the Nagata family, which has run the place for three generations, says rising costs and aging equipment are forcing them to shut it down on June 30.

The Nagata family matriarch, 66-year-old Chieko Nagata, also wants to retire.

"For us, it's a bittersweet ending," said Nagata's daughter Cindy Hanscam, who runs the store with her sister, Tina Bunch.

While they're sad, it will also mean Nagata can retire and spend time with her grandchildren.

Nagata will continue her work as president of Chado Urasenke Maui Association — one of the main schools of Japanese tea ceremony — and will remain active with the Kahului Union Church. She had mixed feelings herself.

"I'm sad," Nagata said. But then, "Now I can relax."

Customers lamented the news.

"It's one of the last landmarks in Pa'ia town," said 70-year-old Richard Amadeo of Pa'ia. "Breaks my heart," he said, adding that he has known Hanscam and Bunch since they were little.

"Now I got to find someplace to get my apple turnover and my small coffee and my cigarettes."

Lee Keating, a part-time Maui resident from Aspen, Colo., was shocked.

"No. Why?" she asked the family with her eyes and mouth wide open. "This is really sad. ... Where am I going to get poke?"

The store makes its poke with a secret sauce passed on from another Pa'ia fish market.

Customers will also miss the Spam musubi, Miyako sushi and Home Maid Bakery pastries.

The business began in 1927 as Nagata and Sons, when Fred Hitoshi Nagata and his brothers began selling groceries in the camps. The family also had a retail location along Baldwin Avenue.

It became the original Nagata Store in 1935 when Fred and Kiyome Nagata left plantation field work behind. The couple started their store in the rustic structure along Hana Highway where it has been ever since.

Photos of the late Fred Hitoshi Nagata and Kiyome Nagata, the grandparents of Hanscam and Bunch, still hang in the back of the store.

Chieko Nagata and her husband, Fujito Len Nagata, took over store operations from his parents. Fujito Nagata died in 1991.

Although Bunch said the closure "was a sudden decision," she said every year the family had evaluated the business situation to decide if they should continue.

Prices for the merchandise they carry have gone up, and equipment in the store needs to be repaired or replaced.

"Everything costs money. It's kind of expensive," she said. "It's not that we didn't want to keep going."

The family has ordered lots of Nagata Store T-shirts for nostalgic customers who want a memento.