Major US grocery chains hit by cybersecurity incident

You pull out your phone to check your grocery store's digital coupons or place an order for dinner. Suddenly, the app won't open. The website is unavailable, and the groceries you were counting on for tonight may never arrive. For anyone who depends on online grocery shopping, that's a frustrating problem.

That's the situation shoppers encountered this week at several major U.S. supermarket chains. A cybersecurity incident at grocery giant Ahold Delhaize forced the company to take some systems offline. The disruption affected Stop & Shop, Food Lion, Hannaford and the Giant supermarket chains. The company says its physical stores have remained open, although customers have experienced interruptions to online services.

There's another reason this story deserves attention. The same company suffered a major data breach in 2024 that exposed personal information belonging to more than 2.2 million people. So, as investigators work to understand the latest incident, shoppers have a reasonable question: Could their personal information be at risk again?

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On Oct. 12, Ahold Delhaize confirmed a cybersecurity issue within its network. The Netherlands-based company owns some of America's best-known regional supermarket chains and operates more than 9,400 stores worldwide. The company took certain systems offline to protect its operations while security teams investigated the problem. In its official statement, Ahold Delhaize said: "Our teams are taking steps to assess and mitigate the issue. This includes taking some systems offline to help protect them."

The company serves approximately 60 million customers each week across its international businesses. Consequently, a problem involving its technology can affect grocery shopping far beyond a single store.

The cybersecurity incident has disrupted online services for five major U.S. supermarket chains:

According to Grocery Dive, websites and mobile apps for all five chains were still unavailable on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 14. That marked at least the third consecutive day of online disruptions. Customers have encountered problems accessing online ordering and digital coupons. Some app-based loyalty features have also been unavailable. In its Oct. 13 update, Ahold Delhaize said it was beginning a controlled relaunch of certain systems. However, as of Oct. 14, the company had not announced a firm timetable for restoring all affected services.

Yes. In its Oct. 13 statement, Ahold Delhaize confirmed that its supermarkets across Europe and the United States remained open and were serving customers. Notices from the affected U.S. chains also indicated that pharmacies were operating during their normal business hours. However, online shopping has experienced significant disruptions