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The store's name gives off vibes of a futuristic focus, but Galaxy Kosher Meat Market in Old Bridge is actually going for a more old-fashioned approach.

Goldberg Kosher Meats closed at 2626 Route 516 last year, but brothers Reuben and Joseph Rahmani reopened the location at the end of June with a store that combines traditional butcher services with catering and takeout. The Rahmanis also run Reuben's Glatt Spot in West Orange and previously owned stores in Elizabeth and Lakewood.

Galaxy, a name borrowed from the Rahmanis' former West Orange store, aims to distinguish itself from the pre-packaged goods of supermarkets by offering cuts of meat such as London broil, tenderloin, and chuck based on the specific requests of customers.

"If you come and you see something you want customized, we make it for you," Reuben Rahmani said. "Supermarkets don't accommodate what people want. People sometimes want the old-fashioned way, they grew up with it."

For example, "If [customers] want ground turkey and veal together, we will give them ground turkey and veal together," said Rahmani, who lives in Hillside.

The store is under the kosher supervision of Rabbi Yaakov Wasser from Young Israel of East Brunswick and Rabbi Chaim Lobel from Young Israel of Aberdeen. Wasser said that he is a member of the Vaad of Raritan Valley, but is supervising Galaxy independently because it is located outside of the Vaad's region.

Wasser said the Vaad gave him full consent to supervise Galaxy and that the store maintains the organization's standards for kashrut.

"It's a very well-kept store, and it obviously has a nice selection," Wasser said. "[Rahmani] has a track record from the other stores that he has run very well."

David Goldberg also ran an old-fashioned butcher store for 33 years at the same site, but retired at age 82 from a combination of fatigue due to the work itself as well as a daily commute from his home in Brooklyn.

"That particular business is a tough physical business," Goldberg said. "You are dealing with big pieces of meat, taking them apart and cutting them. It is strenuous work."

Goldberg originally ran his store in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn during the industry's 1950s heyday, when many Jews had just arrived in America following the Holocaust and still yearned for butcher shops like the ones they had in Europe, he said. But by the 1970s, Goldberg said he instead found himself selling to the more Americanized children of the original European immigrants and in 1975 moved his business to Old Bridge, even as the industry began to shrink, because of his research on the fast-growing Jewish community of central New Jersey.

Even though Old Bridge doesn't have a particularly large Jewish population, Goldberg said he chose the store's location on Route 516 in order to reel in customers from surrounding towns such as East Brunswick, Matawan, Marlboro, and Manalapan.

"[Route 516] is a connecting road between [Route] 18 and [Route] 9, which makes it accessible to all the other towns around it," Goldberg said.

Goldberg said that he developed a loyal customer base in Old Bridge and dealt with some of the same individuals for several decades. When Goldberg retired, he said he "had never been kissed so many times in my whole life." Rahmani said that he always hears praise for Goldberg's former store and that his main challenge with the new shop is "giving people the confidence they had before to shop here."

With very few old-fashioned butchers remaining, customers have already been flocking to Galaxy not only locally but also from southern New Jersey, northern New Jersey, and even Pennsylvania, Rahmani said.

"If this location was here for 30 years, it can carry for another 30 years or more. Why not?" Rahmani said. "If people are not moving to Old Bridge, they are still moving into the surrounding area."

Rahmani's new store offers takeout for chicken, deli, and side dishes just like his West Orange location. Now that he has opened in Old Bridge, Rahmani said that his large staff from northern New Jersey will be able to cater brises, weddings, and office parties in central and southern New Jersey as well.

"I go everywhere and anywhere," Rahmani said.

Galaxy gives the kosher-observing community of East Brunswick an additional meat option to Shoprite, Acme, and Highland Park-based Glatt 27, but the store is that much more vital in Old Bridge where a smaller Jewish community is underserved, Wasser said.

Goldberg said that Rahmani is using a sound strategy in diversifying his business by offering takeout and catering, something Goldberg never did in Old Bridge. And despite shrinking demand, Goldberg said that a niche for traditional butchers remains.

"The ethnic taste is still there," Goldberg said.