When George Wing set up shop in Upper Gloucester in 1977, he never thought Wing’s Tank and Tummy would become a must-stop for Route 100 motorists looking for a tasty bite and a friendly face.

“I thought I’d be here maybe 10 years,” said Wing, 75, who last week locked the doors to his namesake store and diner for the last time after 31 years of business. “It just kept growing and growing.”

While old customers stopped by the store last week to say their goodbyes, new owners Felix and Penny Lincoln prepared to carry on the legacy left by Wing, who is leaving behind the daily bustle of the diner for the quiet of his farm.

“They’re young and they should do good,” said Wing, just minutes after handing the keys to the Lincolns, both 34. “It makes you feel good to hand it over to someone who can continue it.”

Wing knows a little something about living up to the past as he also took over the store from longtime owners. He bought the store 31 years ago from Orlean and Elliot Sturgis, who had run the site for the previous 30 years.

Wing began selling meat from the “beefalo” he raised at his nearby farm, and it became the store’s unique calling card. Wing learned about beefalo, a hybrid of cattle and buffalo, while studying at the University of Illinois, which he attended in the early 1970s after a 20-year career in the Air Force. Beefalo meat is low in fat and cholesterol, and has been a hit at the store, the only place one can buy Wing’s beefalo.

Over the next three decades, the Wings made the diner a family affair and a community staple. Locals would stop by to pick up some food and the latest gossip, and travelers along the busy stretch of Route 100 made sure to save their appetite for a bite at Wing’s. More than a diner or a store, it was a town institution, a beacon for all things New Gloucester.

“They always come to us when they want to find somebody, and we could always tell them where they lived,” said Wing.

It was more than just a business to Wing as well. After 31 years, he knows it is time to go, to move on, but it is difficult to leave after all these years the place that has been his home away from home. With the family’s time at the store winding down, Wing and his son Dusty sat down to think about all the people who had worked there at one time or another.

“We came up with 112,” said Dusty Wing, who runs the family’s 90-acre farm along with his father. “We’ve had three generations, and there are five of us kids. All 13 grandchildren worked here, and we’ve had various aunts and cousins.”

Wing’s is a leftover from a bygone era, Dusty said. Now when you drive along Maine’s busiest roads, you see the over and over again the same signs for the same chain stores, he said.

“The Mom-and-Pop stores, they’re going away,” said Dusty.

While his dad is ready to step down from behind the counter, he is pleased to see the store pass to a local couple who want it to remain a centerpiece of the community, Dusty said. Offers to buy the store have come Wing’s way in the past, Dusty said, but his father wasn’t ready to sell.

“They just weren’t right for the community,” said Dusty.

The Lincolns, however, are longtime customers who say they know what the community wants out of the store, which will now be known as Linc’s Variety.

“I know these faces,” said Penny. “I pass them on the way in the door.”

In fact, Penny and Felix stopped by the store the night before it was to become their own to pay their respects to Wing’s and all it has been to the community.

“I came in and thanked George,” Penny said. “It was a hug last night and a handshake today.”

The couple, who live just down the road on Route 100, took the past week to put their own flourish on the store’s interior – “It’s just a facelift, not so much a change,” said Felix – and were planning on a grand opening Aug. 8. They intend to keep a lot of the customer favorites, while bringing back gas service.

“We’re going to have fuel again, and continue with the food and the pizza in the kitchen,” said Felix, who feels he knows the vendor side of the business from his years working for Pepsico Inc.

The couple have a strong connection to New Gloucester, having lived there for the past eight years. Felix is originally from Mechanic Falls, and as a child he would often visit his grandmother, Marion Bryer, at her farm, where the couple now lives.

The Lincolns said they feel a strong commitment to Wing, and to the reputation he has built over the years. They have learned from watching him work, the couple said, and they hope to live up to his example.

“I think it means a lot to him to sell it to a local couple,” said Felix.

His last two nights at the store were good ones, George Wing said. There were free hot dogs and pizza feeding the steady stream of customers. There were old friends swapping old stories, and on the final night a longtime neighbor stopped by with a guitar to send Wing’s Tank and Tummy into history with a song. It was a fitting end, said Dusty Wing.

“People we hadn’t seen in quite some time were stopping by to say hi one last time,” he said.

New Gloucester businessman George Wing, 75, is ready to retire to his farm after selling Wing’s Tank & Tummy, a store and diner he bought in 1977. A key to the popularity of the business were the beefalo hybrid bison and cattle he raised on the farm and served in the diner on Rouote 100.Business owner goes out to pasture