Feb. 22, 2018 – West Bend, WI – Neighbors coming home from work Thursday afternoon reacted with a bit of shock to find the doors closed at Ries’ Sausage Plus Spirits Meat & Deli, 1435 W. Washington Street in West Bend.
“Did you know about this,” said Barb Justman. She stopped just before 4 p.m. to pick up a small deli tray of sausages. “Oh come on…..”
Justman was obviously disappointed.
A white sign on the door read ‘We are closed until further notice. Thank you.’
Another neighbor named Paul pulled up in his pickup truck, got out and started walking toward the store.
“They’re closed,” said Nick Thill as he walked his dog across 15th Avenue.
“I had honey and some ice cream in there,” Thill said. “He paid up front so I’m not worried.”
Glancing through the store windows Thill’s wife said the shelves “looked empty” as well as the deli.
Businesses in the strip mall said other customers came in Wednesday night asking why the store was dark. One person said there was a semi out back earlier in the day.
In February 2016 Steve and Karen Ries sold the store to Sammy Toor of Illinois.
Toor made some changes, including replacing Kewaskum Frozen Foods line of meats and sausage with the Boar’s Head brand.
Customers complained and the traditional Kewaskum Frozen Foods was brought back, albeit short term.
In late 2017 an unsubstantiated rumor filtered around social media announcing the store’s demise.
Toor said it was not true and spent months advertising and trying to market for Christmas sales.
There’s been no response to messages left at the store today.
Officials at City Hall in West Bend said they had no update and a direct phone number for the owner was not available.
Some neighbors are concerned because they’re made reservations for fundraising brat frys this summer at the little Red Shed Brat Haus on Highway 33. Ries’ Sausage Plus handled the rental of that facility and often supplied the meat for the various organizations.
I gave out gift certificates for Christmas!
I am not surprised by this move. I live in Illinois, but every time I come back to West Bend I would make it a point to stop at Sausage Plus to get various sausages. When I was in over the Thanksgiving weekend, I found out that they were not selling the Kewaskum brand sausages. I told them of my disappointment. When I returned for Christmas to get raw beef, they had the sausages back. YAH! Then I returned on February 3rd, they didn’t have the sausages again. The deli area was much reduced in terms of items. I asked if they would get the sausages back and the response was that the Kewaskum brand was gone for good.
I think you have a situation where you had a successful business that was bought and the person who bought it doesn’t understand the market and what people want. Sometimes change is needed in a business to make it better. In this case, change was too much or too radical and it was killing the business. I now need to find another source for my raw beef at Christmastime.
This was NEVER the same after it was sold. Constantly out of items. Finally stopped coming as the quality diminished. Too bad, it WAS a great little deli.
I’m not surprised. The quality of food and service decreased dramatically after Ries sold it. I stopped in not too long ago and it looked like a store ready to go out of business.
Karls country market in the falls all homemade