Ahold Delhaize USA CEO Claire Peters issued a public letter last week apologizing to customers and detailing how the company’s five grocery banners have kept operating through a cybersecurity incident that took their websites and apps offline. The letter, posted to LinkedIn, came alongside a separate message from Giant Food President Ira Kress committing to extend loyalty points that would have expired during the disruption.
The parent company first disclosed the incident on Oct. 12, saying it had detected a security issue within its network and had taken some systems offline to protect them. Ahold Delhaize USA said the outage and its mitigation steps affected certain brands and services, including a number of pharmacies and some e-commerce operations, and that it had brought in outside cybersecurity experts and notified law enforcement. The company has not released details on the cause of the incident or said whether any data was affected.
It is the company’s second significant incident in two years. A November 2024 attack on Ahold Delhaize USA systems exposed personal information belonging to more than 2.2 million people.
Keeping the stores open
Peters’ letter named each banner – Food Lion, The Giant Company, Giant Food, Hannaford and Stop & Shop – and said all of their stores remained open throughout the disruption. With the brands’ own e-commerce channels down, the company turned to its third-party delivery partners to cover online orders.
“We are also working with our partners, including Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats, to meet customers’ pickup and delivery needs,” Peters wrote.
Store websites that were replaced with maintenance notices told customers that stores, pharmacies and fuel stations were operating as normal and that any unfulfilled online orders would be refunded.
Peters took direct responsibility for the gap in service. “We take seriously the trust you place in us and we let you down simply because we were not available to serve you in all the ways you expect from us,” she wrote. “Our teams are working tirelessly to restore our websites and applications.”
Protecting loyalty value
At the banner level, Giant Food addressed one of the more practical customer concerns in an outage of this length: loyalty points that expire while the app and website are unavailable.
“Once our website and app are back online, we will extend points that would have expired during this time to ensure you have sufficient time to redeem them,” Kress wrote in a message to Flexible Rewards members. He added that the chain’s stores, pharmacies and fuel stations remained open and that teams were working around the clock to restore service.
The decision removes a secondary source of frustration before it builds. Customers who cannot log in to check or redeem points during an outage often discover expired balances only after service is restored.
What the response offers other retailers
For grocers watching from outside, the Ahold Delhaize USA response offers a few reference points for their own continuity planning. The company separated store operations from digital systems quickly enough to keep registers, pharmacies and fuel running while the network was contained. Third-party marketplaces served as a backup channel for pickup and delivery when owned channels went dark. And both the parent company and at least one banner communicated in the CEO’s and president’s own names rather than through unsigned statements, with specific commitments on refunds and loyalty points rather than general apologies.
Peters closed her letter by thanking employees and partners. “They have been working around the clock, and I am incredibly grateful for their commitment, care and determination,” she wrote.
Ahold Delhaize USA is the U.S. arm of Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize, which operates more than 9,400 stores in the United States, Europe and Indonesia.