By Owen Tucker-Smith

Supermarket shelves are emptying out at some stores around the country, after a cyberattack hit a major distributor to Whole Foods Market and other chains.

United Natural Foods said it detected unauthorized activity on its systems last week and took certain ones offline proactively.

Disruptions to its operations have followed, United Natural said. Stores around the country have reported being unable to place orders. The company has told suppliers that it hopes to restore normal operations by Sunday, according to a notice viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

At some Whole Foods locations, shelves have gone empty, according to social-media posts by shoppers. Grocery co-ops and smaller chains have been affected too: At A&S Country Market, bell peppers and cucumbers are out of stock, and owner Valerie Martinez said she is watching her supply of lettuce dwindle.

"There's no customer service, no drivers working, no warehouse working," Martinez said, referring to United Natural's operations. The Carson, N.D., supermarket depends on United Natural for around 90% of its inventory, Martinez said, and she didn't expect to receive some of her shipments until next week.

A spokesman for Whole Foods said that the Amazon-owned chain was working to restock shelves as quickly as possible, and apologized to customers for the inconvenience.

United Natural Chief Executive Sandy Douglas said on a Tuesday call with analysts that the company has developed workarounds to continue servicing customers where possible. It is also working to bring systems back online. A company spokeswoman declined to comment further.

"I have daily personal conversations with about 15 to 20 CEOs of our customers," Douglas said. "And the conversations have been extremely constructive and collaborative."

United Natural specializes in distributing natural and organic products, with more than one-third of its business coming from its long-running contract with Whole Foods. The cyberattack has shown in recent days how one company's technology problems can spiral across the U.S. food system.

In November, the owner of Stop & Shop reported a cybersecurity issue across the grocery chain's U.S. network. In 2021, a ransomware attack targeting JBS roiled the U.S. meat industry.

Maurer's Market in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., was preparing for the area's peak tourism season last Friday when owner Jeff Maurer realized his United Natural portal was down. After a flurry of calls over the weekend, he learned he wouldn't be able to order more products, leaving his shelves looking "pretty tough," he said.

Maurer said he was extremely frustrated with United Natural for not preparing stronger contingency plans. "My biggest fear is that people are going to come into the store, see all these empty shelves, and think that we're going out of business," he said.

United Natural's system outage also affected food companies that rely on it to distribute their products to chains like Whole Foods. The company also said that until its systems are restored, suppliers wouldn't be able to send messages via the company's internal portal.

Shares of United Natural have dropped more than 18% over the past five days and are down more than 15% this year.

Beyond the cybersecurity debacle, United Natural told investors this week that it was cutting its profit outlook for the year due to costs from terminating its contract with grocer Key Food. Douglas said that the move would allow the company to exit an unprofitable relationship and that it would close a Pennsylvania distribution center that served the grocer.

The cyberattack is likely to deal an additional blow to United Natural's bottom line. Douglas told analysts that while it was too early to estimate costs, the company "will be able to manage it."

Write to Owen Tucker-Smith at Owen.Tucker-Smith@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 10, 2025 19:31 ET (23:31 GMT)

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