Cyber incident hits grocery stores in US, Netherlands and Belgium

Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch multinational retailer, announced Monday it was taking precautionary measures following a cybersecurity incident, with stores in the U.S., Netherlands and Belgium reportedly impacted.

Distribution centers, online grocery orders and in-store pricing have been disrupted, although it is unclear whether this was due to the incident itself or the precautionary measures.

The company said its teams “are taking steps to assess and mitigate the issue,” including “taking some systems offline to help protect them.” 

“At this time, our stores are open and serving customers,” they said.

Ahold Delhaize operates across nine countries including the U.S. and several states in Europe, and employs more than 400,000 people. Its American brands include Food Lion and Stop & Shop.

The company did not explain the nature of the incident, nor whether customer or employee data was compromised.

Food Lion staff in the U.S. have discussed the incident on social media, with managers apparently characterizing it as an IT outage.

One Stop & Shop customer complained the grocery retailer was providing no information or estimated time of arrival on deliveries, stating they were housebound and worried about a delivery scheduled for Thursday.

In the Netherlands, the outage has affected subsidiary grocery retailers Albert Heijn, Etos and Gall & Gall since Sunday afternoon, NOS reported.

Albert Heijn's website, app and customer service were unavailable, grocery deliveries were suspended, and electronic shelf labels displayed outdated promotional prices. The brand said it had disconnected systems to protect its IT environment but gave no timeline for restoring services.

In Belgium, Delhaize customers could not place new orders or contact customer service, VRT News reported. Its website and app remained accessible.

“Protecting our infrastructure in the best interest of our customers, associates and partners is a top priority,” stated the company. “We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused customers and partners.”

The company previously suffered a cyberattack in 2024, causing issues at prominent supermarkets across the U.S. More than 2.2 million people had information stolen from Ahold Delhaize’s systems during that incident.