I respect Sid (the original Beer Jew?) and he was a local icon and all, but quite frankly he wasn’t anything more than a lowballer. His customer service was crappy at best.

My wife bought a bottle of wine that had turned a couple years ago and he grumbled angrily at me when I returned it that: “There’s nothing wrong with this.” In other words, Me and/or my wife were liars. I told him to taste it and he said he didn’t need to. He tried to get me to take another one, and I told him that wasn’t an option since the whole case might be bad. So he barked at his clerk to make sure I didn’t get anything more than the price of the bottle in exchange and stomped off. Nice.

I highly doubt he or his family would consider letting the employees buy the place, my guess is one of the grandkids will run it on behalf of the family, and they’ll carry his legacy of low prices, crappy service and keeping the place looking as close to a NY slum as they can.

I always though the employees should take over the joint. I remember a lot of long-timers working there (Dark Mark, Dale, Lance, etc.) They made Sid’s as much of a neighborhood liquor store as the clientele did. It’s one of the things I actually miss about Sioux Falls.