Whole Foods told employees that the ongoing suspensions and confusion at leading distributor United Natural Foods (UNFI) “takes several days to resolve.”
The Amazon-owned retailer told internal communications staff that TechCrunch saw that UNFI was experiencing a “national technology system outage.”
Whole Foods said in communications with staff that cyber attacks will affect UNFI’s “ability to select and ship products from warehouses,” which “impact normal delivery schedules and product availability.”
Staff to the missive included instructions to limit communication with customers. Communications say that “only approved customer topics” that Whole Foods employees can share with customers is that the grocery giant has a “temporary supply challenge.”
When we reached TechCrunch, Whole Foods spokesman Nathan Cimbala said:
UNFI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment on Tuesday, and was not given a recovery timeline. A Whole Foods spokesman did not say how the company claimed that the situation could be resolved in a few days.
UNFI is one of North America’s largest food retailers, supplying groceries and fresh produce to more than 30,000 stores and supermarkets in the US and Canada. The company disclosed the cyberattack in a filing with federal regulators on Monday, and UNFI CEO Sandy Douglas told investors on Tuesday that the company took the entire network offline on Friday after detecting the intrusion.
The company also reported net sales of $8.1 billion for the quarter ended May 3, 2025 on Tuesday.
As reported Tuesday, TechCrunch has heard anecdotes of empty shelves at several Whole Foods stores and other grocery stores that rely on UNFI.
The Whole Foods store that the reporter visited on Tuesday showed notifications in several aisles. The store says it is experiencing unspecified “temporary stock issues” for some products.
Much of the downstream real-world impact on grocery stores and their customers may not be seen until later this week.
Do you know more about cyberattacks in UNFI? Are you a customer of a company affected by the confusion? You can safely contact this reporter via a message encrypted with Zackwhittaker.1337.