From...

November 30, 1999
Web posted at: 10:51 a.m. EST (1551 GMT)

by Curtis Franklin

(IDG) -- For a man with one of the gloomiest sites on the Web, Steven Bernard is remarkably cheerful.

"I'm an eternal optimist," says Bernard, chief executive officer of Emergency Survival Food Service. That's a good thing, considering the laundry list of catastrophes presented on his company's Web site, www.survivaly2k.com.

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Survivaly2k takes the very reasonable point of view that, come what may, you've gotta eat. "Come what may" includes the Cold War, shooting wars, famines, hurricanes, and various other disasters that have occurred since this company started doing business 52 years ago.

Though the company does most of its business with the government and large institutional buyers, Bernard says that individuals also need steady food supplies in disaster situations.

"The flooding on the Mississippi in the early '90s showed how vulnerable people are to the food supply chain. Trucks couldn't get across bridges, store shelves were bare, and most people just weren't prepared," he explains.

Hurricane Andrew, earthquakes in California, and a series of major winter storms helped spread the gospel of emergency food supply outside the Midwest. Fears about the effects of Y2K bugs have raised consciousness about food supplies to a new height.

Bernard is eager to point out that the consciousness hasn't just been raised among camouflage-clad survivalists tucked into remote mountain cabins.

"I've talked to a lot of people in the last year, and our customers come from a real cross-section of the population," he says. "We're getting a lot of urban calls; it's not just people out in the wilds."

Just in Case?

Bernard isn't really comfortable with the "End of Civilization as We Know It" tone that a lot of Y2K-survival vendors have taken.

"To me it's an insurance policy," he explains. His home "insurance" plan includes a small auxiliary generator and a couple of weeks' supply of food.

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"I'm not suggesting that everyone go out and buy the $4000 year's supply of food," Bernard protests, as he points out that customers can buy from his Web site in quantities as small as one or two cans of dehydrated milk.

Whether customers buy the products by the can or by the pallet, in a few months Y2K will be finished as a marketing tool. What then for the Emergency Survival Food Service?

Bernard isn't worried. He lists a litany of possible disasters, any one of which might leave store shelves bare and unprepared bellies rumbling. The URL might change with future phobias, but he's convinced that more and more families will continue to put a week or two's supply of food alongside fresh batteries and clean blankets on the "just in case" checklist.

And Bernard isn't worried that the food will simply gather dust under the back stairs. "You can eat it next year or go ahead and eat it next week," he says, "because the food is really good."