A June cyberattack on a major grocery distributor affected three Haines grocers, resulting in shortages and empty shelves that are only this week filling back up.
The town’s major grocery stores, Howser’s IGA, Olerud’s and Mountain Market, all order at least a portion of their stock from grocery distributor United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI), which released a statement on June 9 announcing their ordering systems had been hacked. That meant for at least a full week, Haines grocers were unable to make or receive any orders from UNFI.
The disruption was apparent in varying degrees across the three stores. At Olerud’s, where manager Tyler Swinton said only the store’s dry goods are ordered through UNFI, dairy, meat and produce remained stocked.
But at the IGA, where manager Kevin Shove said all of his ordering is through UNFI, there was more of a disruption.
“That week, when it went down, we didn’t have any ordering, period,” Shove said. Even dipping into substantial inventory, which Shove said was $50,000 below normal levels this week, stock ran low.
One week after the hack was announced, Shove was able to put in a manual order, not through the usual ordering software, but instead by hand, one item at a time. What is normally a two-hour ordering process, Shove said, took two days. That order replenished dairy, grocery and meat stock, but still left freezer shelves almost bare.
Swinton said he was also able to put in a manual order after a week. Like Shove, that was roughly two days of work. But at Mountain Market, grocery manager Kimberly Rosado said she didn’t have the ability to spend so much time on an order.
“(A UNFI representative) literally sent me a sheet where I had to fill out everything by hand, and I said, that’s not going to happen,” Rosado said.
On top of missing out on the manual order, Rosado said that unlike IGA and Olerud’s, she keeps her inventory lean. At the beginning of this week, she listed off items that were completely gone, or almost gone from store shelves: alternative milks, half and half, yogurt, eggs, freezer items, chicken.
“When the sole purpose of your job is to be profitable and have sales, and you don’t have anything to sell, it’s hard,” Rosado said.
Rosado was able to find workarounds for some products, things like cheeses, that she quickly ordered from another distributor. And luckily, the stores look to be out of the woods.
According to a UNFI statement, as of June 26, ordering systems were back online, and all three Haines stores received full shipments on Tuesday’s barge. Rosado, who said she normally orders one pallet of dry goods, had four pallets on the barge.
Even with shelves now restocked, the grocers said they took significant hits.
“Dairy and meat we got hammered on in terms of sales numbers,” Shove said.
And Swinton said stress levels were only just coming back down.
“The timing was not good,” Swinton said. “If it happened in the middle of winter, people probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But it happened bike race weekend.”