Whole Foods told its employees that ongoing holidays and disorders to its primary distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI), can take “several days to resolve”.
Amazon’s retail giant told staff in an internal communication, seen by TechCrunch, that UNFI faced a “national technological break”, which UNFI has been described as an incident in cyberspace.
Whole Foods said in contact with staff that Cyberettack is affecting “UNFI’s ability to choose and transport products from their warehouses”, and that this will affect our regular delivery timetables and product availability “.
Shipment to staff included instructions to limit communications with customers. The “only single approved customer speech point” that workers Whole Foods can share with customers, according to communication, is that the grocery giant has “temporary challenges”.
When TechCrunch is achieved, Whole Foods spokesman Nathan Cimbala said: “We are working to restore our shelves as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused for customers.”
UNFI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comments on Tuesday, nor did it give a timetable for his recovery. The Whole Foods spokesman did not say that the company had reached its claim that the situation could resolve in a few days.
UNFI is one of the largest food distributors in North America, providing grocery shops and fresh products to more than 30,000 stores and supermarkets in all the US and Canada. The company revealed Cyberettack Monday in a deposit with federal regulators and UNFI CEO Sandy Douglas told investors on Tuesday that the company took its entire network offline on Friday after the invasion was detected.
The company also reported $ 8.1 billion in net sales in the quarter end on May 3, 2025.
As we mentioned earlier on Tuesday, TechCrunch has heard anecdotal reports of empty shelves in some Whole Foods stores and other UNFI -dependent grocery stores.
A Whole Foods store visited by the journalist on Tuesday presented alerts in several corridors saying the store was facing an unspecified “temporary stock issue” for some products.
Much of the real impact of the real world on grocery stores and their customers may not appear until later this week.
Do you know more about Cyberettack at UNFI? Are you a corporate client affected by the disorder? You can safely contact this journalist via encrypted message at Zackwhittaker.1337 in the signal.
