By Vicki Biggs-Anderson
North Shore food co-op shoppers will soon find many items on their lists unavailable, according to Ahren Grunow, general manager of the Cook County Co-op in Grand Marais. The bad news went public in a June 10 email sent to all co-op owners and shoppers.
It read “Over the weekend we were alerted that one of our main food distributors, United Natural Foods Inc. [UNFI] experienced a nationwide system outage. We’ve since learned this situation is ongoing and affects stores like ours as well as commercial giants like Whole Foods and Cub Foods.
The message also said that in the immediate future the Co-op wouldn’t be getting all the products ordered, but that they are working with local vendors, other distributors, and the National Co-op Grocers, their primary purchasing liaison, to limit the impact on customers.
When asked exactly what kind of items might be in short supply or be missing altogether, Grunow said it was too early to tell. However, he told the Northshore Journal Tuesday evening that UNFI supplies the largest percentage of the Co-op’s products.
Spokepersons for UNFI said Tuesday that the supply interruption was likely due to a cyber attack but did not speculate on the source.
For questions about the coming shortages, Grunow said customers should go to “contact” on the Co-op website or email him at gm@cookcoounty.coop.
