Whole Foods at risk of empty shelves for surprising reason | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Whole Foods is a favorite of health-conscious shoppers, as the store maintains an “unacceptable ingredients” list and prohibits items with hydrogenated fats and artificial flavors from being sold at its stores.

The store also offers products with a Whole Trade Guarantee, which means that the products are certified as coming from companies with fair working conditions, reasonable wages, and sound environmental practices.

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Because of its stance on health, environmental advocacy, and paying workers a fair wage, Whole Foods has a large and devoted customer base. Many shop the store regularly and don’t even mind the fact that Whole Foods has been playfully given the nickname “Whole Paycheck.”

Shoppers who visit Whole Foods in the coming days, however, may get quite a surprise. That’s because the store is warning customers and staff alike of an issue that could lead to shortages and empty shelves.

Here are some details about the problems happening at Whole Foods, which have a surprising cause.

Will there be empty shelves inside this store?

Image source&colon; Shutterstock

What’s putting Whole Foods at risk of empty shelves?

The issue currently affecting Whole Foods is a problem with the store’s primary distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI).

UNFI supplies frozen goods and more than 250,000 grocery store products, and the Amazon-owned supermarket depends on the distributor to provide a substantial number of the products that Whole Foods sells.

UNFI supplies grocery products and fresh produce not just to Whole Foods, but to more than 30,000 different stores spread across both the United States and Canada. It’s one of the country’s largest food distributors, and the company reported $8.1 billion in net sales during the quarter that ended May 3, 2025.

Unfortunately, UNFI recently discovered an intrusion into its information technology systems, which resulted in a nationwide outage. Because of its tech problems, UNFI had to restrict the service it provides to its clients, reporting that it is now serving them only on a “limited basis.”

Whole Foods is feeling the pain of this decision.

The company alerted employees that UNFI’s issues were preventing them from selecting products and shipping them from local warehouses. UNFI also warned workers that the problems would potentially take several days to resolve. The statement made clear that UNFI’s problems will “impact our normal delivery schedules and product availability.”

How Whole Foods is responding to the surprising incident

In its communication with the staff about the product shortage, Whole Foods had some simple advice. The store told staff members that they should strictly limit the communications that they have with customers about what’s going on.

There was just a single approved talking point included in the memo that staff could relay to customers. Staff could tell those who are disappointed by empty shelves that the grocery store is experiencing “temporary supply challenges.”

UNFI, for its part, is working diligently to try to restore full service, with company spokesperson Grace Turiano telling TechCrunch, “We continue working steadily to safely restore our systems and provide the services our customers and suppliers know and expect from us.”

More Retail:

UNFI has made some progress already, bringing both ordering and receiving capabilities back online, but it still has work to do. Unfortunately, even when the distributor is back up and running, a service backlog may cause a lag in filling shelves left empty at Whole Foods.

Customers shopping at Whole Foods need to be aware that their goods may be out of stock in the meantime. So they don’t waste a trip, consumers may want to consider calling the store before shopping to see if the items they need are available.