Seeing a lack of some items on Pierce County grocery shelves? This might be why
If you’re seeing scarcity of some items on your local grocery shelves, it might be more than a seasonal disruption.
Pierce County and national grocers have reported issues with regional grocery supplier United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) following a cyberattack on UNFI’s operations reported in recent days.
In response to questions Wednesday, UNFI media representative Kristen Jimenez shared the company’s latest statement with The News Tribune.
According to the statement, the distributor is “gradually bringing our ordering and receiving capabilities back online, with the goal of further increasing our capacity over the coming days.”
“We continue working steadily to safely restore our systems and provide the services our customers and suppliers know and expect from us,” the company stated. “The investigation is ongoing with the support of leading forensics experts.”
It added, “Our customers, suppliers, and associates are our highest priority. We continue to work closely with them to minimize disruptions as much as possible.”
One Pierce County grocer told The News Tribune his store had resorted to submitting a recent order “the old-fashioned way,” written down and called in. Similar accounts were reported elsewhere Wednesday by Supermarket News.
The Wall Street Journal reported systems were anticipated to be fully restored by Sunday, based on a notice to suppliers viewed by the newspaper.
Providence, Rhode Island-based UNFI is one of the largest suppliers for grocery entities nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, other major chains and various co-ops and independent grocery stores.
In a statement June 9, UNFI said that it had “identified unauthorized activity in our systems and have proactively taken some systems offline while we investigate.”
On Wednesday, TechCrunch reported that Whole Foods told its employees in internal communications that the supply disruptions “may take several days to resolve,” and included instructions to limit communications with customers.
A Whole Foods media representative said the company was working to restock its shelves “as quickly as possible.”
PCC Community Markets in Seattle also reported impacts on social media, “which may temporarily lead to some delivery delays and limited product selection. All our stores are open, and our produce, meat, and deli departments remain well-stocked.”
Tyler Myers is president of The Myers Group, which owns various IGA grocery stores in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, including Key Center IGA in the Key Peninsula.
In response to questions, Myers told The News Tribune that even though the store is supplied by UNFI, “The UNFI issue only impacts a few departments within our store. We have multiple vendors that service our store. For example, this temporary UNFI supply problem does not affect our produce or meat departments.”
He added that ”It is our understanding that UNFI will be shipping product to us as early as next week. We have already begun to arrange for a new supplier if UNFI continues to have problems meeting our orders.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
