Food Lion, Stop & Shop Down After Cyberattack: What to Do

Last updated: October 13, 2026.

What to do now

Check before you shop. The Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford and The Giant Company websites and apps are unreliable right now, so do not trust the app for pickup or delivery slots. Call your local store or just go in person.
Do not re-place orders on dead systems. Stop & Shop says unfulfilled orders placed through Stopandshop.com or its app will be refunded. Re-ordering on glitching systems is how double charges happen, so keep your confirmation emails instead.
Expect phishing to follow. Outages attract fake “order refund” and “account security” texts and emails. No customer data theft has been confirmed in this incident, so do not click links in any message about it. Go to the official site directly.
Employees: talk to your store. Stop & Shop workers have reported being unable to reach schedules and pay stubs online. If that is you, contact your store manager directly instead of waiting on the app.

What happened

On October 12, 2026, Ahold Delhaize confirmed a “security issue within its network” and said its teams had taken some systems offline “to help protect them.” The company apologized for the inconvenience and called protecting customers, employees and partners its top priority.

The disruption started before the announcement. Websites, apps, deliveries, customer service and even loyalty programs for Dutch brands Albert Heijn, Etos and Gall & Gall have been down since Sunday afternoon, October 11 (BankInfoSecurity). On the US side, all five American banners went dark: Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford and The Giant Company, the Pennsylvania chain that is a separate entity from Giant Food (Progressive Grocer). An internal Food Lion memo warned stores they “may be unable to shop, stage, or hand off orders.”

Stores are open, but “open” does not mean normal. Multiple Albert Heijn distribution centres, including Tilburg, have been paused, with suppliers told to route through Zaandam only, which means fresh produce and other short-shelf items could run low in some stores (particle.news). In-store, electronic shelf labels may show stale prices from last week’s promotions while the register charges the current price; Albert Heijn has asked shoppers to keep receipts so missed discounts can be compensated (NL Times, via sqmagazine).

The France attack is probably unrelated

The same weekend, a separate cyberattack hit French supermarkets: hackers pushed refrigerator temperatures to 50 degrees C across around 150 Intermarche stores (per owner Les Mousquetaires), plus dozens of Carrefour, Monoprix and Cooperative U locations. Food spoiled, a few fires broke out, and the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into what it called a “large-scale” attack (BleepingComputer; Capital). Ahold Delhaize said there was no reason to see a link between the two incidents (Reuters). Two grocery cyberattacks in one weekend makes for an alarming headline, but the evidence points to coincidence rather than coordination.

Claimed vs confirmed

CONFIRMED: Ahold Delhaize disclosed a cybersecurity incident on October 12 and deliberately took systems offline as a protective measure (company press release, quoted across multiple outlets).
CONFIRMED: All five US banners, Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford and The Giant Company, are affected, along with Albert Heijn, Etos, Gall & Gall and Delhaize in Europe (Progressive Grocer; BleepingComputer, October 12).
CONFIRMED: Stop & Shop’s website and app were down Monday night, and unfulfilled orders through Stopandshop.com or the app will be refunded (NBC 10, October 12).
CONFIRMED: This is Ahold Delhaize’s second major incident in two years. The November 2024 attack on the company’s US systems exposed internal employment records of more than 2.2 million current and former employees and their dependents, names, Social Security numbers, bank details and health data from HR files. The company’s breach letters made no reference to customer data (Infosecurity Magazine; RedPacket Security).
NOT CONFIRMED: Who is behind this attack. INC Ransom claimed responsibility for the 2024 breach in April 2025, but Ahold Delhaize has never officially named its attackers (Cybernews, via Progressive Grocer).
NOT CONFIRMED: The attack method. Experts suspect ransomware, but the company has not confirmed it and no group has claimed responsibility for this incident (BankInfoSecurity, October 12).
NOT CONFIRMED: Whether any customer or employee data was accessed this time. The company declined to answer (BleepingComputer).
UNKNOWN: When services will be back. The company has given no restoration timeline (NBC 10).

Why it matters

Ahold Delhaize runs 9,550 stores, employs 384,000 people and posted $103 billion in net sales in 2025 (BankInfoSecurity). When a retailer at that scale pulls systems offline, this is not a website hiccup. Logistics systems, employee tools and online ordering all went dark together, and the company has said nothing about how long the fix takes.

Our take: the 2024 comparison is the one to watch, but read it correctly. Last time, the stolen data was employee HR records, not shopper payment data, and it still took until June 2025 for the full scope to surface. This time the company moved faster to contain, while saying nothing about whether data was accessed. Until Ahold Delhaize states plainly that no customer or employee data was touched, treat every “order refund” text as guilty until proven innocent.

Frequently asked questions

Are Food Lion and Stop & Shop down right now?

The physical stores are open, but every digital channel is unreliable. The websites and apps for all five US banners, Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford and The Giant Company, have been down since the company took systems offline starting October 11. Online ordering, delivery slots, loyalty programs and customer service are all affected. If you need a pickup or delivery, call your local store first rather than trusting the app.

Was my personal data stolen?

That has not been confirmed for this incident. Ahold Delhaize has not said whether customer or employee data was accessed and declined to answer the question directly. For context: the company’s 2024 breach involved internal employment records of workers and their dependents, not shopper payment data. While this stays unconfirmed, the practical steps are the same. Watch for phishing texts about “refunds,” use a unique password on your grocery accounts, and keep an eye on card statements. Our data breach guide covers the full checklist.

I placed a Stop & Shop order before the outage. Will I get a refund?

Yes. NBC 10 reported on October 12 that any unfulfilled orders placed through Stopandshop.com or the Stop & Shop app will be refunded. Keep your order confirmation email and check your payment method over the next few days. Do not re-place the order on the glitching site in the meantime, that is how double charges happen. If a refund text arrives with a link, ignore the link and check your account directly.