After more than 50 years of selling fruit and veges the Cuba Street Fruit Mart has closed. The Dayal family look back on the hustle and bustle of the trade.

For more than 50 years, the Dayal family's fruit and vege shop has looked on as Cuba St transformed from butchers and fishmongers to trendy cafes and hipster boutiques. Nikki Macdonald joined them for the last days of one of the city's last urban greengrocers.

Crate towers form beside the Cuba Street Fruit Mart truck as Sanjay Dayal's black dreads and yellow high-vis vest buzz like a worker bee around Wellington's produce market. Fifteen crates of avocados - that's $7000 right there. Cabbages, a pallet of agria potatoes, six sacks of red onions.

Sanjay fingers a crate of red tomatoes - they were green when he bought them. There's no school of vege buying; no degree in fruit pricing - when he first started 15 years ago he was terrified of making a bad deal, but now he's got the feel: what he can move; what chefs look for; what they're prepared to pay. The buzz of turning produce into profit never gets old.

But now he's selling the wholesale business and shutting the landmark shop, he'll be spending someone else's money. It's a totally different feel.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF The last generation of Dayals to run the landmark Cuba Street Fruit Mart, Sanjay Dayal has sold up to spend more time with his four children.

There's only one other truck in the loading bay at Wellington's daily produce market in Grenada North - from Miramar Fruit Supply. This used to be so bulging with independent greengrocers re-stocking you had to take turns parking.

Sanjay crosses the carpark to Market Gardeners, past the fresh flowers, the chestnuts and kiwifruit, through the plastic chiller curtain to the pomegranates. He knocked them down from $3 to $2 each - sometimes he thinks they up the price just so he can feel better by negotiating a bargain. Every link in the chain needs to make money - from the growers, to the wholesalers, to the restaurants. Supermarkets upended that balance.

"You don't have to win all the time," Sanjay says.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF The day begins at the produce market at Grenada North, looking for bargains to onsell to restaurants.

Back at the warehouse entrance, Manuela from Flowers Manuela backs out her station wagon stuffed to the back windscreen with hydrangeas. Her shop is around the corner from Sanjay's and she comes in every day to buy rocket and an avocado.

"That's the thing I'm going to miss the most - just the people," Sanjay says. "I feel like I'm letting down our little community on Cuba St."

"I'm surprised I haven't cried yet," he adds. That comes later.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF The last days were filled with loyal customers saying their final goodbyes. Customer of 26 years, Fidel's cafe owner, Roger Young drops by to take a photo of Sanjay Dayal, left, and Devendra Patel.

Beyond the vapers cradling the day's first caffeine hit, the knit-bombed park benches, and the bucket fountain splash, the bright vitamin-rich offerings of 168 Cuba St are among the street's oldest and most recognised sights.

Originally set up by Chinese fruiterer Wong Tong Fat, the Cuba Street Fruit Mart has occupied this spot for more than 70 years. Last Saturday, it shut for the last time, closing the doors on a legacy of urban greengrocers and a business that has been part of the Dayal family for 63 years. Out back the brag wall tracks time - All Black signatures from 1980s Michael 'Iceman' Jones to Dan Carter; a letter from chef Rick Stein thanking them for their excellent hamper.

The modern business was 95 per cent wholesale - supplying restaurants - and that's gone to Christchurch firm Service Foods. The sale will buy 42-year-old Sanjay and his sister Joshna, 46, time with their families - a 40-hour working week in place of the 5am to 5pm, seven-day stress of a small business owner. But the new owners didn't want the shop.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF It's the regulars they'll miss the most. Loukas Hatziloukas has been coming in to see the Dayal brothers every day for 48 years. From left: Vallabh Dayal (known as Wally), Loukas Hatziloukas, Magan Dayal and Lakhu Dayal.

"Truck's here" someone bellows as Sanjay pulls up from the markets. There's a scurrying to unload, which includes three guys who look far too old to be carting veges.

Sanjay's father and two uncles will tell you they're retired. Yet still they rose at five and came every morning for a few hours, helping out, scolding Sanjay for buying the wrong stuff or failing to notice two missing celery, being paid in veges and chats with the loyal customers they'd been serving for 50 years.

Loukas Hatziloukas grabs a $2 bag of apples. He's been coming here every day for the 48 years he's had his alteration shop up the road. He leans in to greet Sanjay's 75-year-old uncle Lakhu - who retired eight years ago. "Can I just pay later, Sanjay?" Hatziloukas asks, when distracted staff fail to take his offered tenner. "No - that's why I'm having to sell," Sanjay jokes in retort.

Hatziloukas reckons he'll still see Lakhu - known as Lucky. "We'll go fishing together, me and Lucky", he says. That's the strength of the bond they've built over 50 years of daily banter. He might even sell up himself, move back to the Greek island of Samos, where he's from. "You can't work forever," he says.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF After more than 50 years, the fruit mart had outgrown its cramped back room.

Chef Shaun Clouston, from Logan Brown restaurant a few doors up, pops in to say hi to Sanjay - the next generation of relationships built over pomegranates and potatoes, with a garnish of basil and coriander. Sanjay's always good for gossip, Clouston says.

"We go for food, Sanjay and I. It's a bit more than just a fruit shop. I come and hang out. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself."

"See you at Christmas," Sanjay half-joked to his uncles when they signed away the fruit and vege business that has sustained three generations of Dayals. "That's the saddest thing about it," Sanjay says. "The special part about the shop was that it kept the family together."

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Sanjay's uncle Lakhu retired eight years ago, but still came in five days a week to help out for a few hours.

It was Sanjay and Joshna's grandfather Dayal Makan​ who began the family's Cuba St legacy. He moved from the Gujarat village of Tavdi to Pukekohe in 1949 with his three boys, to run a market garden. His wife stayed to tend the farm.

Smiling-eyed Lakhu tells the story, perched in the cramped packing room out the back of the shop, next to the old cast iron safe he's got his eye on as a future coffee table. His shy older brothers Magan, 78, and Vallabh, 79, have already scarpered.

Lakhu was just six when they came from India. An uncle had taken over the Cuba Street Fruit Mart from the Wong Tongs and called Lakhu's father down to help. That's uncle in the Indian extended family sense, rather than blood relative.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF It's the people the Dayal family will miss most.

Makan arrived in 1955, when trams still plied Cuba St and there were eight or nine fruit shops, as well as butchers and bakeries and fishmongers. He started as a barrowman wheeling veges, worked his way up to buying a half and then full share. In 1965 he retired and returned to India, and the Dayal brothers took over.

Retail was hard, Lakhu remembers. There was so much competition they struggled to pay market bills. Their truck was so clapped out that when the produce market moved from central Wellington to Grenada they had to buy a new one because the chugger couldn't make it that far.

As supermarkets killed the retail market, the brothers began supplying the nascent restaurant scene. Orsini's was first up, followed by Madame Louise at Le Nourmandie, who was so fussy about her veges she'd pick her own straight off the truck.

"There were no herbs, no fancy lettuces, only one variety of tomatoes," Lakhu says. "Now we might have 10 varieties of tomatoes. The whole market's changed."

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Long-time customer Mary Daish says her goodbyes to Joshna and Sanjay.

Their kids grew up around the shop, but never imagined they would follow their parents into the business. On late night Fridays, the shop would close at 9.30pm and the brothers' wives would cook and bring the kids. There was soupy chicken, doughnuts from Dorothy's Cake Shop, fish and chips and milkshakes.

The kids worked school holidays, learning lifting and wheeling, cash handling and respect. But Sanjay studied IT at university, went to work at IBM in Palmerston North and then to London. Joshna qualified in chemical engineering and got a job for a Christchurch neutraceuticals company.

Returning from a six-year OE, Sanjay was struck by how old his Dad Magan looked. He gave the three brothers a break for a month each. That was 15 years ago. Business was low and the brothers were considering packing it in. But Sanjay saw a hint of a heartbeat in wholesaling.

"They put us through university, gave us degrees and sent us out into the wide world. But somehow, I ended up back here," Sanjay says. "At the end of the day, if it was good for them, it's good for me."

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Sandwiched between suits breakfasting at Olive cafe and the hipster boutique next door, Cuba Street Fruit Mart was a reminder of another age, in which Cuba St was full of butchers, fish shops and bakeries.

Joshna joined a few years later, after being made redundant. That allowed Magan to retire. But they've been victims of their own success. They've grown the business five-fold, which means Sanjay hardly sees his four kids.

"When I first started here I could read a book in about three days in my down time. And the paper, back to front. Now I haven't read a book in years."

The shop had outgrown its purpose and had to close for earthquake strengthening anyway. It just seemed like the right time.

On their last trading day the uncles, their children, the grandchildren came back to the shop to re-enact those Friday night gatherings. They brought soupy chicken, doughnuts and fifty years of memories.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF Giving up the shop is such a big deal for the family, the decision brought Sanjay to tears.

It's very sad, Lakhu says."Loukas comes in - I see him every day. He'll come and hassle a bit, it's all good fun. I'll miss all that."

It's sad, Sanjay says, those tears finally welling. "All good things come to an end. But you look forward, not back."

So this week Sanjay and Joshna went to work for Service Foods in Tawa, alongside most of their staff. And Lakhu took 17 of the family back to the family farm in India to eat mangos from trees planted by his grandfather, father and himself. Three generations of fruit selling celebrated with three generations of fruit.