Just days after we learned a massive cyberattack took hundreds of French stores' refrigeration systems offline — leading to the spoilage of tons of food — several American grocery stores experienced cyber attacks. This includes Food Lion, the East Coast chain, which saw a cyber attack take its apps and website offline.
The grocery chain said it took systems offline as a "precaution" while teams work to restore service.
The grocery giant took its systems offline as a precaution and states that teams are working to restore service. https://t.co/xIWpaG8bLb
— FOX 5 DC (@fox5dc) October 15, 2026
Ahold Delhaize USA, the parent company of the grocery store chains and others, said in a statement Monday that was later updated Tuesday that it was experiencing a cybersecurity issue within its network.
The issue prompted the company to take "precautionary measures, including taking some systems offline to help protect them."
"We recognize that these actions have caused disruption for customers, associates and partners, but protecting our infrastructure in the best interest of our customers, associates and partners is a top priority," Ahold Delhaize said, adding its teams are urgently working to "investigate the incident and restore affected systems safely."
"As they make progress in assessing and mitigating the issues, we are in the process of starting a controlled relaunch of certain systems."
Customers are unable to load digital coupons, with one shopper saying it's been several days since things have worked.
Idk whats gping on with food lion's website or app but how am I supposed to do the digital coupons? Its been like a week smh. I only shop there for the coupons and shop & earn rewards. If you're doing away with those say that but it being down for a week is ridiculous @FoodLion
— Dani Britt (@IAmJustBee) October 15, 2026
Other stores, including Stop & Shop and Hannaford, are also down following the cybersecurity incident.
Hannaford, Stop & Shop websites and apps remain offline after cybersecurity incident https://t.co/q7SSoBnAF9 pic.twitter.com/omkad3xYqd
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) October 15, 2026
Back in August, the U.S. warned of cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure. According to Fox Business, several agencies including the NSA, FBI, Department of Energy, and EPA warned that there was an "active threat" targeting Siemens S7 Series programmable logic controllers, which monitor and control industrial equipment across manufacturing, energy, water, food, and agriculture sectors, among others. This could pose safety hazards, disrupt services, and throw infrastructure into disarray.
In France, officials say the damage from the one cyber attack will cost tens of millions of Euros and caused fires in several locations. While French authorities say there won't be massive food shortages, there will be localized disruptions.