Whole Foods advised its workers that the continued outages and disruptions at its major distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI), could take “a number of days to resolve.”
The Amazon-owned retail big advised employees in an inner communication, seen by TechCrunch, that UNFI was experiencing a “nationwide expertise system outage,” which UNFI has for its half described as a cybersecurity incident.
Whole Foods stated within the communication to employees that the cyberattack is affecting UNFI’s “potential to pick out and ship merchandise from their warehouses,” and that this may “impression our regular supply schedules and product availability.”
The missive to employees included directions to restrict communications with prospects. The “solely single authorized buyer speaking level” that Whole Foods workers can share with prospects, in response to the communication, is that the grocery big is having “short-term provide challenges.”
When reached by TechCrunch, Whole Foods spokesperson Nathan Cimbala stated: “We are working to restock our cabinets as shortly as potential and apologize for any inconvenience this will have induced for patrons.”
UNFI has not responded to TechCrunch’s request for touch upon Tuesday, nor given a timeline for its restoration. Whole Foods’ spokesperson didn’t say how the corporate reached its declare that the scenario could resolve in just a few days.
UNFI is likely one of the largest meals distributors in North America, supplying grocery items and contemporary produce to greater than 30,000 shops and supermarkets throughout the U.S. and Canada. The firm disclosed the cyberattack on Monday in a submitting with federal regulators, and UNFI’s chief govt, Sandy Douglas, advised buyers Tuesday that the corporate took its total community offline on Friday after detecting the intrusion.
The firm additionally on Tuesday reported $8.1 billion in web gross sales within the quarter ended May 3, 2025.
As we reported earlier Tuesday, TechCrunch has heard anecdotal studies of empty cabinets at some Whole Foods shops and different grocery shops reliant on UNFI.
A Whole Foods retailer visited by this reporter on Tuesday displayed notices in a number of aisles saying that the shop was experiencing an unspecified “short-term out of inventory problem” for some merchandise.
Much of the downstream real-world impression on grocery shops and their prospects will not be seen till later this week.
Do you realize extra in regards to the cyberattack at UNFI? Are you a company buyer affected by the disruption? You can securely contact this reporter by way of encrypted message at zackwhittaker.1337 on Signal.
