United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) has temporarily taken some of its systems offline to investigate a possible cyberattack.
The large wholesale distributor of natural and organic food products supplies major grocery retailers across the U.S.
According to a news release published by the company Monday morning, UNFI “identified unauthorized activity” in its systems, prompting the company to take some systems offline to investigate. The release did not specify the systems affected.
UNFI has notified law enforcement and is coordinating its investigation with forensics experts.
“We are assessing the unauthorized activity and working to restore our systems to safely bring them back online,” the news release stated. “As we work through this issue, our customers, suppliers, and associates are our highest priority. We are working closely with them to minimize disruption as much as possible.”
Several affected employees and stakeholders have taken to social media to discuss the systems outage. One post on X showed a screenshot of a subreddit conversation on Whole Foods, where a worker had been unable to scan in received goods at a store since Sunday.
Kristen Jimenez, UNFI’s communications vice president, told FreightWaves in an emailed statement that the investigation is ongoing and referred FreightWaves to UNFI’s news release.
FreightWaves reached out to Whole Foods for comment.
