MENDOCINO CO., 8/13/25 — It all started when she couldn’t find the Oscar Meyer bologna. Next to disappear were the quarts of half-and-half, which Shelby Medina liked to purchase as an economical alternative to the 16-ounce size.
Medina, a 13-year resident of Round Valley who works as a library assistant at the Round Valley Public Library, was used to traveling out of town for lower grocery prices and better selection. But Keith’s Market IGA, which has been the only grocery store in Round Valley for decades, usually did a pretty good job of keeping its shelves stocked.
After two weeks of watching supplies dwindle at Keith’s, Medina finally spoke with store manager John Clarrey. What she found out deeply concerned her — there had been a cyber attack in June on United Natural Foods, Inc., one of Keith’s main grocery suppliers, and Clarrey had no idea when he would be able to order from the nationwide distributor again.
UNFI is the largest publicly traded wholesale distributor of health and specialty foods in the U.S. and Canada, and the main supplier of Whole Foods. For Clarrey, ordering from UNFI is usually as simple as logging into his online account and submitting an order. On June 6, however, UNFI’s online ordering system went down as the result of a cyber attack that is still being investigated.
UNFI did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this story.
Not only was Clarrey unable to place an order, he also couldn’t contact UNFI to get information or updates on the disruption, a problem also encountered by Arena Market & Cafe general manager Natalie Cortese. Cortese’s Point Arena market, which uses UNFI as its primary distributor, described a lack of communication from UNFI during the cyber attack as the “biggest issue.”
“We weren’t notified until after our order deadline for the week that we wouldn’t be able to place an order,” Cortese recalled. “We couldn’t get anyone on the phone. Prior to the UNFI merger last year, we had the same sales rep for seven years. The lack of communication was very frustrating.”
Clarrey echoed that sentiment, reporting, “Frankly, their communication during that time was very, very poor. I felt like I was getting the runaround. We were told things that didn’t happen. They did a very poor job of communicating. Their phone lines were shut down. I had no way to reach UNFI at all.”
Unable to supply his customers with basic staples such as meat, dairy and produce, and with no timeline of when UNFI would come back online, Clarrey took matters into his own hands to keep the shelves stocked. With the help of Keith’s employees, Clarrey organized runs out of town with private vehicles to big box stores such as Costco and FoodMaxx to purchase perishables that were packed on ice and transported back for sale at Keith’s Family Food Center.
Despite his efforts, Clarrey shared that there “were still a lot of empty shelves” at the market during this time. “For weeks, I was personally going out of town daily and hauling staples back such as meat, dry groceries and dairy, trying to keep the community here fed, as well as keep the store in business. Many people in Round Valley do not have the transportation to travel out of town for food. We had a lot of empty shelves; I could only haul so much back in my pickup truck. It was quite the mess.”.
It was three weeks before Clarrey was able to get a full delivery from UNFI, and with the drain on his backstock, he said it took Keith’s Market another month to fully recover from the disruption caused by the UNFI cyber attack.
Over in Point Arena at Arena Market & Cafe, Cortese also struggled to meet the needs of her customers. Luckily, the market had backstock that she could pull from for the two weeks that she was unable to order from UNFI. But without the backstock, Corteste said, “the shelves would have been bare.”
When asked about their relationships with local food producers, both Clarrey and Cortese said that they source some produce and meat from farmers in Mendocino County, but that it makes up a small percentage of the inventory for their stores. All their dairy and dry goods come from UNFI.
Diversifying is key in less remote areas
Elsewhere in Mendocino County, grocery retailers felt less of an impact due to diversified distributor relationships that remain out of reach for the more remote areas of Point Arena and Round Valley. At Harvest Market in Fort Bragg, grocery manager Troy Holden said that the market’s location at the junction of highways 101 and 20 ensured relationships with primary, secondary and tertiary retailers who don’t service the more remote areas of the county, where retailers such as Keith’s and Arena Market can’t meet the minimum order requirements for delivery or are just too far out there.
At Mariposa Market in Willits, the show also went on, the store having diversified its distributors years ago. Grocery manager Kevin Copperfield described Mariposa as being “well prepared for disruptions,” with multiple distributors in the mix, such as Kehe, Azure Standards and Hummingbird Wholesale. While Mariposa still orders some groceries from UNFI, it was able to source similar products from its other retailers and pull from backstock to minimize the impact of the UNFI cyber attack.
Mariposa also has strong relationships with local producers, carrying local kombucha, fish, meat, fruits and vegetables from farmers in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. While Copperfield worries about the impact that a large period of social unrest or a labor stoppage could have on his ability to receive deliveries of goods that he can’t get locally, he reported that Mariposa Market has its own generator and several days worth of fuel so that even in the event of a fire or mass power outage, he can continue to serve the Willits community.
Several grocery managers worried that a hacking event could occur with a supplier again. Clarrey stated that he thought it was “very possible,” and noted that UNFI had not given him “any information” regarding what caused the hacking event, or what measures were being taken to prevent such a disruption from re-occurring.
For the more far-flung areas of Mendocino County, grit and determination seem to be the only safety net available in the event of future disruptions to the food distribution network. Round Valley farmers market manager and vendor Deborah Bauer gained two new customers for her locally raised meat during the cyber attack. She said both of her new customers mentioned the bare shelves at Keith’s and added with concern, “What if this had kept going? What are we supposed to do out here?”
“I guess it’s time to beef up my vegetable garden,” Medina reflected.
Thank you for the update.!!