United Natural Foods restores ordering systems, resumes deliveries across North America

American wholesale food distributor United Natural Foods said that it has made significant strides in restoring its electronic ordering systems and has begun processing orders and delivering products to clients throughout North America.

 

On June 5, UNFI discovered a data security incident that forced the company to take parts of its critical system offline, resulting in disruptions to its supply chain operations.

 

“The incident has caused, and is expected to continue to cause, temporary disruptions to the Company’s business operations. 

 

“Pursuant to its business continuity plans, the Company has implemented workarounds for certain operations in order to continue servicing its customers where possible. The Company is continuing to work to restore its systems to safely bring them back online,” UNFI said in its SEC filing.

 

In a data security incident notice published on its website, UNFI said that upon discovering the unauthorised activity, it promptly took several systems offline as a precautionary measure. This disruption impacted the company’s ability to process orders and deliver products to its customers.

 

American multinational supermarket chain Whole Foods, one of UNFI’s clients, said that the incident has affected UNFI’s “ability to select and ship products from their warehouses”, which in turn will “impact our normal delivery schedules and product availability.” 

 

Following the revelation of UNFI’s security incident, multiple customers have reported empty shelves at various Whole Foods locations, as well as other grocery stores dependent on UNFI, with items being marked as ’temporarily out of stock.

 

In a separate update on June 15, UNFI said it has made remarkable progress in restoring its affected systems.

 

“UNFI is receiving orders and delivering products to our grocery store customers across North America. Over the past few days, we’ve made significant progress toward safely restoring our electronic ordering systems, which will allow us to serve the customers that order through these systems in a more automated way and continue to increase our operational capacity. 

 

“We are also using alternative processes to ensure our customers receive the products they need while we continue making progress to restore our technology capabilities,” the company added.