Leading restaurants and grocery stores across the state of Texas get their sausages from one place: Smokey Denmark Smoked Sausage Co. The company, which has been around since 1964, has seen tremendous growth over the last decade, with an expanded retail presence and a growing list of products. How did this venerable Austin meat processor find new owners who would revitalize the business and develop a large following? Of all things, it was the Y2K bug that did it.
The Y2K bug, if you don’t remember, was the glitch that could have caused chaos in computer systems when the date switched from December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000. It didn’t occur, thanks to the work of computer programmers, but it could have been a real problem. Smokey Denmark’s accounting software at the time had the bug, in fact. Fortunately, there were accountants in the family who were able to handle it.