After more than three decades, Shloimy’s Kosher World is shutting down for good. The beloved grocery store — one of the oldest in town — will permanently close its doors next week, marking the end of an era for a community that has grown almost beyond recognition since the store first opened.

The store’s roots go back more than 30 years, when it opened as a tiny, one-aisle supermarket on County Line Road. At the time, Lakewood was a fraction of its current size, and a small neighborhood grocery was enough to serve the needs of the local frum community. As the town exploded in population and the appetite for quality kosher food grew with it, Shloimy’s grew too, eventually relocating to its current, larger home.

Beyond the product, Shloimy’s carried something harder to quantify: a connection to an older Lakewood, a town that felt more like a tight-knit village than the sprawling Jewish metropolis it has since become. Shopping there was a brush with living memory.

With its closing, Lakewood loses one of the last grocery stores that predates the great wave of growth that transformed the township into one of the largest Orthodox communities in the United States. The shelves will be empty by next week. What filled them — and what the store meant to the people who depended on it — will take considerably longer to replace.