Cyberattack leaves Stop & Shop shelves empty days before Thanksgiving
WATERTOWN - Stop & Shop stores across Massachusetts had empty shelves on Monday due to a cyberattack.
Stop & Shop shelves empty
People who walked into the store in Watertown ready to stock up before Thanksgiving left empty-handed.
"I can't buy carrots. I can't buy lettuce. The vegetables are slim and the meat department is low," shopper Jim Noto told WBZ-TV. "Very disappointing especially this time of the year. It's just a shame because they're losing a lot of customers."
"Empty. Completely empty! All of it," said shopper Maryanne Lambert, who could only get half of her grocery list.
"The produce just wasn't there. It was awful. What's going on?" Instacart shopper Tina Diblasi said. She's thinking about taking a vacation from the delivery service until the shelves are stocked again.
Shoppers said they're going to go to other stores to get their necessities ahead of the upcoming holiday.
Cybersecurity issue
Stop & Shop says it's a cybersecurity issue affecting its parent company, Ahold Delhaize, and that they have placed signs in stores that tell customers it was because of an IT systems outage.
"While there may be some limited inventory for certain products, we are working to re-stock our shelves and anticipate item availability to continue to improve over the next few days," the store said in a statement.
Ahold Delhaize says it is investigating the issue and has told law enforcement about the breach. They are taking some systems offline to protect them.
"This issue and subsequent mitigating actions have affected certain Ahold Delhaize USA brands and services including a number of pharmacies and certain e-commerce operations," Ahold Delhaize said in a statement.
Stop & Shop announced in July that it would be closing 32 stores across five states that were "underperforming." Seven of those stores were in Massachusetts. The company donated all of the remaining food at the shuttered supermarkets to food shelters near their stores.
"Stop and Shop is a business in some trouble. It changed CEOs in September. They're closing almost 1 in 10 of their stores even before this. It does seem to have been targeting their financial transaction systems so they couldn't manage payments but honestly, everything is vulnerable," said William Masters, a professor of food economics and policy at Tufts University.