TOMS RIVER – The Stop & Shop on Route 9 will be closing next year, according to company officials.
“Stop & Shop has made the difficult decision not to renew the lease for our store located at 2360 Lakewood Road, in Toms River, New Jersey, as the store was not meeting financial expectations,” said Daniel Wolk,
External Communications Manager, in an email responding to questions from The Toms River Times. “Stop & Shop intends to operate the store through the late spring of 2026. All associates will be given the opportunity to transfer to other Stop & Shop locations.”
The store is near the intersection of Route 70 and 9, in a shopping center with a Buy Rite liquor store and Dollar Tree.
A customer leaving the Stop & Shop one recent morning said she didn’t know that it was closing until a reporter told her. She said she was “really bummed out” because she lives around the corner, so it’s very convenient.
She’s not a fan of ShopRite, which is the next nearest store. “It’s always so crowded,” she said. “By the time you work in the gas and the aggravation,” it’s not worth going.
The Stop & Shop grocery chain had been in the news earlier this year after county officials said there was a widespread pattern of product mislabeling and improper handling of beef and poultry.
The Ocean County Department of Consumer Affairs in cooperation with the County Health Department investigated complaints regarding the sale of spoiled meat and poultry at all five Ocean County Stop & Shop locations.
“Products were marked with dates indicating when they were put out for display rather than when they were actually packaged, creating the appearance of freshness well beyond the actual delivery dates,” officials said.
The investigators also learned that Stop & Shop had moved away from in-store butchers and was relying heavily on pre-packaged products prepared by off-site wholesalers.
As part of a consent agreement, Stop & Shop paid $75,000 in fines and penalties. They will implement stricter safeguards to ensure accurate product labeling and compliance across all of its 46 New Jersey locations.
In January, a mechanical malfunction caused a fire in the shopping center, causing it to temporarily close.
Last year, Stop & Shop’s European parent company, Ahold Delhaize, announced they would close 32 of its lowest-performing stores to arbitrarily end with 350 locations across five states. Locally, Howell, Jackson, and Point Pleasant Beach were caught in the crosshairs. The money saved from operating those 32 stores were reinvested into improving the remaining 350.
