Cub is one of many grocers in the Twin Cities and nationwide caught in the fallout from a cyberattack on its parent company, wholesale distributer UNFI.
For the grocery stores and co-ops that rely on UNFI for food shipments — including Whole Foods, Kowalski’s and Lunds & Byerlys locally — that means potentially empty shelves after no-show deliveries. Specifically at Stillwater-based Cub, half of the pharmacies in its stores are offline as UNFI works to resolve the hack to its IT systems discovered just this past Thursday.
Cub, which UNFI bought in 2018 as part of its SuperValu acquisition, has “proactively taken certain systems offline, which has disabled systems” at some of its pharmacies, the company posted to its website Tuesday.
“At pharmacies still experiencing the disruption, we are unable to fill new and refill prescription orders at this time,” the statement read.
Signs posted at the St. Louis Park Knollwood Cub pharmacy on Tuesday afternoon read: “Technical difficulties! Our phones and our prescription system are down.”
Rhode Island-based UNFI delivers food to more than 30,000 locations across the United States and Canada, including both national and local grocery chains. Kowalski’s and Lunds & Byerlys were not immediately reachable Tuesday evening.
Whole Foods told Reuters the grocery chain is working to restock its shelves “as quickly as possible.”
UNFI, which has $31 billion in annual revenue, disclosed this week “unauthorized activity” had occurred in its systems last Thursday but offered few other details around the nature of the cyberattack. UNFI was also mum on the extent of the impact to its food deliveries.