Koloa, Kauai >> Thursday a broken freezer kept Rod Sueoka at work late into the night. Friday he was back at 4:30 a.m. to wash down the front of his market. Saturday he drove the Sueoka Store float in Koloa’s Plantation Days Parade.
“That’s how it is in this business,” Sueoka said.
OK, the parade was not an ordinary ordeal of store ownership. That was special. Once in a hundred years special.
As the Sueoka Store parade contingent passed by the Koloa Road store, employees came out banging pots as the crowd on both sides of the street cheered for a local, family business that had reached its centennial. Family from far and wide had returned to Kauai for a reunion and marched alongside the float, passing out cookies. It was a rousing salute, but also a last hurrah of sorts.
The store, founded in 1918 by Mankichi and Yoshi Sueoka, one of the state’s longest-lived markets still in family hands, has been sold to ABC Stores. ABC takes over in April 2019, although the Sueoka Store name will remain.
VOICES OF SUEOKA STORE
Betty Miyazaki, 93, started in the store as a cashier in the 1930s after marrying George Sueoka, who ran the meat department. She remembers taking on all sorts of tasks. “We used to carry 50-pound rice bags, cases of Carnation milk. Even when I was hapai with the kids. Those were the days. Everybody did that.” She still works in the store, keeping the books.
—
Thomas Awong, a 33-year ABC employee, will take over as manager next year, and knows he must tread lightly. “The first day I walked in … everybody knew the guy with the shirt and tie, that’s the ABC guy.” It made him a bit of a target: “They said, ‘Are you closing down the snack shop? You better not.’” He has since gotten permission from corporate to wear polo or aloha shirts to work.
—
Kana Brede, 46, has been coming to Sueoka Store all her life, nearly every day. “It could be for anything, a cheeseburger and fries or any type of meat or grocery item.” Hearing of the store’s sale, “We were sad. … They say it will stay the same, but we’ll see.”
—
Cora Dalocan, 84, a cashier, is the store’s longest-serving employee outside the family, starting in 1964. She did have a break in service, going to Big Save down the road, but returned, preferring the mom-and-pop feel of Sueoka’s, where she feels part of the family. “Good management, good people to work with, good customers. We have fun.”
“We thought we were just going to go quietly, just fade away in the end,” Rod’s mother, Betty Miyazaki, said.
No such luck. On Saturday the 93-year-old climbed into the parade marshal’s car with her brother-in-law Ernest Sueoka, 87, who represented the second generation of store owners. Rod and his cousin, Wendy Kawaguchi, are the third and final generation. No one in the fourth is willing to take over.
“I’m glad we made it,” Rod said of the 100-year milestone. “But I kinda feel bad because it’s ending on our watch.”
JUST TWO days before the parade, another longtime Kauai business passed out of the family. Ishihara Market, founded in 1934 up the highway in Waimea, marked its final day Thursday; it has been purchased by Kalama Beach Corp., an affiliate of Foodland Super Market. Like ABC, Kalama plans to keep the Ishihara name after it revamps and reopens the store next week.
Stacey Wong, senior consultant for Business Consulting Resources in Honolulu and broker for both the Sueoka and Ishihara sales, said their stories are typical for the times. In fact, over the last five years his company has developed a niche finding buyers for mom-and-pop stores with owners in their late 60s and older.
A “one-off” market simply can’t compete against supermarkets big-box stores with their much greater purchasing power, Wong said. To succeed beyond a couple of generations a family business has to grow, as did ABC and Foodland, both of which started as single stores. Larger businesses can also develop a “bench” of next-generation leaders, he said. In the case of the Sueokas, all the great-grandchildren were polled, looking for a successor. “We got zero response.”
After helping Rod and Wendy evaluate their options, Wong said, “we knew success was going to be really hard given external forces.”
The owners decided to sell, asking Wong to find a buyer who would take care of their employees, had an interest in food sales and “would somehow continue the legacy of the store.” They hoped the name could be maintained, but didn’t make that a requirement.
He came up with a list of more than a dozen prospective buyers, and a match was made with ABC in 2015. Rod and Wendy wanted to stay on for four more years, however, so the takeover will not be finalized until next year. All 40 employees have been invited to stay on.
THE ORIGINAL Sueoka Store was on the Koloa Sugar Plantation, stocked with dry goods and general merchandise. Items were sold on credit to plantation workers, to be settled on pay day. In 1933 it moved to the main part of town, across from the sugar mill, in a row of shops that included a barbershop, liquor store and a bakery, mostly mom-and-pops. By the ’50s many of the others had closed.
At some point the sign out front was changed to “Sueoka Market” to reflect a growing emphasis on groceries, but that name never stuck among the family or the community.
Ernest, the youngest of Mankichi and Yoshi’s 12 children, said the Sueoka legacy on Kauai might have ended decades earlier. His father had planned to save enough money to take his family back to Japan, but when the time came the oldest children wanted to stay in Hawaii.
So instead he built a new five-bedroom home and the family settled in for the long run, Ernest said. “It cost about $7,000, that was big money in those days.”
Ernest eventually took over the store, along with his siblings Edith, George and Lily.
Although today the store may seem a little stuck in time, for many decades it was quite progressive. Groceries became the main stock in trade, much of it from local farms. George started a meat market, slaughtering the animals and processing the cuts himself. Ernest started the practice of packaging the meat so customers could serve themselves. Rod introduced a wide line of Asian products that continues to draw customers from around the island. A snack bar opened in the ’80s is beloved in the town for its burgers and a killer loco moco.
In 1993 the family purchased the land under the store, which is another reason it has lasted through years of redevelopment, as Koloa’s main economic force shifted from plantation to tourism.
IN THE last four years, the product mix on Sueoka Store shelves has shifted some, with ABC’s typical sundries and souvenirs taking up several rows upfront. This has helped the bottom line, Rod said.
Profit margins on food items today are just too narrow. Not so for the more tourist-friendly stock. “Those high-margin items help offset the expenses of the store.”
ABC President Paul Kosasa said Sueoka Store is a reminder of his own family’s start, with his grandparent’s grocery store in Kaimuki, so he understands the emotional connection between store and community. ABC’s first changes will likely be to modernize equipment and add central air-conditioning. Beyond that the product mix will shift some, “but we’re going to try and keep as much as we can.”
“I figure we could do a better service to Kauai in not urbanizing it so much,” Kosasa said. “I think we can do it in a more Kauai-way.”
FINDING A PLACE IN HISTORY
The Sueoka Store property has been nominated to the Hawaii State Register of Historic Places based on its importance to the Koloa community since plantation times.
Research by Minatoishi Architects, hired by ABC Stores to make the case, shows that the structure was built in 1923 and initially housed the Koloa Motor Co. and Bishop National Bank (precursor to First Hawaiian Bank). It is described as a “western false front commercial style,” wood with a metal corrugated roof, that was common in many parts of the country at the time. A rock facade surrounds windows facing the street.
Sites may be nominated for historic status under one of four categories based on the significance of the architecture or the people or organizations that have occupied it. The Sueoka building is nominated in a category for properties “associated with events that have made significant contributions to the broad patterns of our history.”
Nomination papers filed by Minatoishi state the building is a “physical representation” of the family’s legacy and the overall story of Japanese immigration to Hawaii. “For a market to be so prominent for so long is a rare commodity.”
The nomination will be heard by the Hawaii Historic Places Review Board on Nov. 30.
