By DAYNA STEIN
When Red Bank’s Foodtown suddenly closed in May after more than 70 years, my first reaction wasn’t to think about the history of the store or wonder what business might replace it.
Instead, I found myself asking practical questions.
Where am I going to buy good steak at reasonable prices? Who else makes vodka sauce that tastes like theirs? Where will I get Jersey corn and tomatoes in the summer? And what about the coffee cake?
On the surface, those questions seem to be about groceries. But they weren’t.
Twenty-two years ago, Foodtown became part of my regular routine. My psychotherapy office is within walking distance, so I often stopped in three times a week—sometimes more. I rarely shopped for the entire week at once. Instead, I’d pick up what I wanted for that night’s dinner, a habit that always reminded me of the way people shop in many European towns.
Without realizing it, I had built part of my life around that little grocery store.
I bought baby food and diapers there when my daughter was an infant. Today she’s 21 years old.
Before forecasted blizzards, I’d stop in for the snacks that made staying home feel cozier and more fun. After I was diagnosed with breast cancer ten years ago, I wandered those familiar aisles looking for comfort food on days when life felt especially uncertain.
One memory still jumps out vividly. Around April 2020, I stood in the detergent aisle staring at shelves that were completely empty. I’d never seen anything like it. I snapped a photo to show my husband, whom I didn’t think would believe me unless I had a photo to prove there was nothing.
I remember fighting back tears—not because I couldn’t buy detergent, but because, for the first time, a place that had always represented normal life suddenly didn’t because of the pandemic.
Foodtown wasn’t just where I shopped. It was where life quietly happened.
Like many longtime customers, I knew some of the workers by name. Kyle, my favorite cashier, and I regularly exchanged Mets’ news while he rang up my groceries. John, the manager, almost always greeted me with a smile of recognition. Kim somehow managed to know nearly everyone who came through her checkout line and made conversations easy.
Those interactions rarely lasted more than a few minutes, but over thousands of visits they became part of something much larger—a sense of belonging.
Now the store has been closed for more than three months, and I still miss it.
For a while, I felt almost embarrassed admitting that. After all, there are plenty of other supermarkets within a short drive. Rationally, nothing about my life has become particularly difficult. I still have places to buy groceries.
Yet something feels different.
As both a longtime customer and a local therapist, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why.
We often assume grief belongs only after the death of a person or a pet. But in reality, grief follows meaningful loss, and meaning is deeply personal.
The places we return to over and over again are sticky in our memories without our noticing. They witness our ordinary lives—the hurried dinners after work, the birthday cakes, the last-minute ingredients before guests arrive, the frozen meals purchased during difficult seasons, and the flowers picked up simply because someone needed cheering up.
The former Super Foodtown building provides a backdrop for the festivities at the Red Bank Police Department’s National Night Out this week at Count Basie Park (Photo by Brian Donohue)
Over years, these ordinary moments accumulate and make meaning. Eventually, a place becomes much more than the service it provides. The place becomes part of us.
In my work as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen similar reactions whenever communities lose familiar landmarks. Whether it’s a gardening center, a general store, a renowned restaurant, or another gathering place, people often describe feeling unexpectedly sad or unsettled. They’re not simply mourning a building. They’re grieving the routines, relationships, memories, and sense of continuity those places represented.
Neighborhoods develop emotional anchors, and when one disappears, people naturally feel unmoored. That’s why comments like, “It was only a grocery store,” miss the point entirely. It was never just a grocery store.
For many of us, it was one of the few places we visited several times each week for decades. The employees watched children grow up. Customers recognized one another in the aisles and caught up. Familiar products became part of family traditions. Displays marked the passing of the seasons. The store became a quiet backdrop for countless ordinary days that, together, made up a life.
Perhaps that’s why driving past the empty building still feels strange.
The loss is small enough that many people hesitate to acknowledge it, yet significant enough that they continue to feel it months later.
If you’ve found yourself surprisingly saddened by Foodtown’s closing, you’re not being overly sentimental. You’re responding to the loss of something that mattered.
The best way to honor that loss isn’t to dismiss it but to recognize what Foodtown represented: community, familiarity, reliability, and the comfort of knowing that, for a little while, some parts of life stayed the same. That sameness was extra important when already there was so much change in our world in terms of technology, AI, and division among people.
I’ve started creating new routines and supporting other local businesses, because communities are built one relationship at a time. And every so often, when I find myself missing that strip steak or the vodka sauce I haven’t quite been able to replace, I make the twenty-minute drive to the Foodtown in Atlantic Highlands.
It’s not the same store, and it’s inconvenient.
But it reminds me that what I miss most isn’t what was on the shelves.
It’s what that place quietly became over twenty-two years: a small but meaningful part of home.
Dayna Stein, MST, MSW, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and co-owner of Red Bank Psychological Services, where she helps teens and adults navigate life transitions, grief, anxiety, depression, and change.
