Shoppers at co-ops and organic grocers in the region might see fewer options at stores over the next few days.
Last Friday, a major U.S. grocery supplier, United Natural Foods Inc., stopped making deliveries after it was hit with a cyberattack.
“The trucks kind of just stopped coming,” said Becca White, with the Co-op Food Stores, which has locations in Hanover, Lebanon and White River Junction.
Since then, grocers haven’t been able to place orders with the company, and far fewer deliveries have come in for everything from tofu to dairy, paper products and canned food.
“My purchasing team is basically like, ‘this is what COVID was like,’” said Cheray MacFarland, at City Market Onion River Co-op in Burlington, one of the largest co-ops in the state. “It’s just a supply chain disruption.”
Many stores have been working behind the scenes to get items from other distributors.
“The strength of our local food system has really buffered us through this,” said Mary Mullally, the general manager at Hunger Mountain Food Co-op in Montpelier.
The Montpelier store typically gets deliveries from United Natural Foods every day besides Sunday, and said the company is their main supplier.
“We are really thankful to the over 400 vendors and producers that have helped us keep food stocked on our shelves right now.”
But local producers are not able to supply at the scale of bigger national companies, particularly for perishable foods like yogurt and butter.
“We still do have options, it’s just the big brands are going to be the ones affected the most,” said MacFarland, at City Market, which gets about half of its products from local producers.
The last she heard from United Natural Foods is that they were planning to duplicate orders from last week, and that the company should be back to normal operations by next week.
Until then, they'll make due.
“Luckily it’s June, so our produce is popping off right now,” she said.
