Cyberattack Takes Food Lion, Hannaford Sites Offline for More Than a Week

What happened

On the weekend of October 11-12, 2026, Ahold Delhaize detected suspicious activity inside its IT infrastructure and, as a precaution, took websites and mobile apps offline across its US and European retail brands. In an update posted to its newsroom, the Netherlands-based company said its investigation confirmed the disruption resulted from "malicious actions of others." Ahold Delhaize notified the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre within 24 hours and filed a police report with Dutch authorities.

Physical supermarkets remained open and continued normal operations throughout the incident. What went dark were digital services: company websites, mobile apps, online ordering, home-delivery scheduling, digital coupons and loyalty-program features.

Which US stores were affected

• Food Lion — website and app offline for nine days, restored October 20
• Hannaford — website and e-commerce still offline as of October 19, according to the Portland Press Herald
• Stop & Shop — online ordering and digital coupons disrupted
• Giant Food and The Giant Company — websites and apps taken down

Ahold Delhaize's European brands — Albert Heijn and Etos in the Netherlands, Delhaize and Gall & Gall in Belgium, bol.com, and operations in Central and Southeastern Europe — faced similar outages. In its October 19 update, the company said European sites for Etos, Gall & Gall and its Belgian e-commerce operations, along with most Central/Southeastern Europe sites, had already been restored, and that Albert Heijn home deliveries were set to resume October 23.

Is this linked to the French supermarket refrigeration hack?

The Ahold Delhaize outage began the same weekend as a separate, unrelated-sounding incident in France: on October 11, hackers compromised internet-connected refrigeration controllers at roughly 700 French supermarkets. The attackers forced the units into continuous defrost cycles, pushing temperatures up to 122°F (50°C), causing widespread food spoilage and, in some cases, fires, according to the Portland Press Herald and Supermarket News.

A Hannaford spokesperson told the Portland Press Herald the company had "no reason to believe the Ahold Delhaize matter is related to the issue impacting some French retailers." The two incidents hit different kinds of systems — refrigeration hardware in France versus corporate IT and e-commerce platforms at Ahold Delhaize — and no shared cause has been publicly confirmed by either side.

What's known — and what isn't — about data

In updates issued October 14 and October 19, Ahold Delhaize said it had "no evidence at this moment that suggests that any sensitive customer, associate or partner data was taken." The company said its investigation, conducted with outside cybersecurity experts, was continuing. It has not disclosed how the intruders gained access or how long they were inside its systems before detection.

Customers whose online or app orders were affected during the outage were told they would receive refunds, according to Ahold Delhaize and several of its US banners.

Background: a second major incident in two years

This is not Ahold Delhaize's first cybersecurity crisis. The company disclosed a breach in November 2024 that affected more than 2 million customers, disrupting deliveries, payments, pharmacy services and online portals, according to Supermarket News. The October 2026 disruption is a separate event, but it has renewed scrutiny of cybersecurity practices at one of the largest grocery operators in the US and Europe.