ReadyWise is a food and drink brand founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2008.
ReadyWise once got a request for 2 million meals over LinkedIn. On September 25, 2017, five days after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, FEMA's supply chain manager messaged Aaron Jackson, who led the company then known as Wise Co.: "Contact me right away." FEMA wanted at least 2 million servings of just-add-water meals from the Salt Lake City company, with deliveries starting immediately.
Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the message reached Jackson at dinner with his family in Sandy. FEMA had already handed out millions of meals after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and was running low. A photo with the story showed dehydrated strawberries being packed at the company's Salt Lake City plant.
The company started in Salt Lake City in 2008 as Wise, and the old name still turns up on products like the Wise 3-Month Survival Food Supply. When the private equity firm Trivest invested in 2012, it described the deal as a partnership with a growing founder-owned business that sold freeze-dried and dehydrated food for emergencies and the outdoors. Chief executive Brian NeVille stayed on to run it.
It has changed hands twice since. Trivest sold Wise Company to Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. in 2016, and the private equity firm Goode Partners bought ReadyWise in December 2021. The company now sells under the ReadyWise name and keeps Wise Food Storage as a partner brand.
The catalog has also spread past emergencies. ReadyWise sells outdoor meals with names like Desert High Chili Mac with Beef, which you eat straight from a resealable pouch, and a ReadyWise UK site serves Britain and Europe.
The food is still packed in Salt Lake City. ReadyWise's co-packing arm lists a 100,000 square foot facility in the city with SQF Level II certification, and the company says its meals are sealed in multilayer pouches with oxygen absorbers and a nitrogen flush. Long-term kits go into heavy-duty buckets or #10 cans.
The shelf life is the pitch. ReadyWise promises up to 25 years and backs it with a guarantee: if a product does not taste as good in 25 years as it does today, contact the company. Few warranties ask you to wait that long to file a claim.
The big kits are sobering in a different way. A Wise 3-Month Survival Food Supply feeds one person for 90 days at 2,200 calories a day, and it takes about 54 gallons of water to make. Storing the buckets is the easy part.
ReadyWise also sells freeze-dried gummy worms under its Simple Kitchen label, and it named them Cosmic Invaders.
