TL;DR
Ahold’s US sites and apps came back online this week after more than eight days dark. IT got the app back, but getting customers back is a different job. I’d start on it before the November 4 earnings call with six moves: tell people what happened, make loyalty whole, aim a real offer at pickup and delivery, make the owned app the cheaper way to order, use the stores to sign people up, and write the plan for the next outage now.
Last week, Ahold Delhaize told its own customers to go shop on its competitors’ apps. Stop & Shop’s outage page and other banners’ outage pages pointed people to DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats.1
The apology coupon ran out Thursday. It offered 10% off one in-store trip, capped at $10, and required you to check in at a Savings Station kiosk to get it. I’ve seen bigger make-goods for a late pizza.
Ahold Delhaize USA’s banner sites and apps came back Tuesday morning after at least eight days offline.2 The company says it has no evidence anyone took sensitive customer, associate, or partner data, and the investigation is still open.
I’ve been building grocery and retail apps since 2011, and the first week after an outage tells you a lot. Some customers drift back on their own. The rest have to be fetched.
1. Tell customers everything, on every channel
Ahold has apologized and filed a report with the Dutch police.3 It still hasn’t said what happened. Customers have heard that silence before, because the November 2024 attack on Ahold Delhaize USA exposed personal information for more than 2.2 million people.4
To their credit, Claire Peters and Giant Food’s Ira Kress signed their letters with their own names and made specific promises on refunds and points. I’d keep that voice for the explanation too. A named executive saying what happened carries more weight than a PR post nobody signed.
Shoppers already learned once that “we’re investigating” can end with a breach letter. Ahold doesn’t need to publish forensics, and it shouldn’t. It does need a plain page on every banner site saying what the company shut off and why, what data it checked, and what’s different now, with the same note on receipts, on kiosk screens, and in an email from each banner president.
Ahold reports third-quarter results on November 4. Customers shouldn’t get the real story from an analyst’s question on that call.
2. Make loyalty whole
Two banners have already said something. Giant Food’s Ira Kress told customers they wouldn’t lose value during the disruption, and Stop & Shop said it would extend GO Points that were about to expire.5
That’s two promises in two different places. I’d set one rule for all five banners: anything a customer couldn’t use between October 12 and restoration (points, rewards, fuel discounts, digital coupons) comes back on its own, without a form or a phone call. The Shelby Report noted that shoppers locked out during an outage often discover their expired balances only after the app returns.6
I’d go further and stop expiring points, period. If Ahold can freeze expirations for a week, it can freeze them for good, and a member who never loses points has one less reason to wander down the road.
3. Aim the offer at the channel that broke
The stores never closed, so a discount on the next store trip mostly rewards people who never left. Pickup and delivery broke, and the offer belongs there.
Ahold has been here before. After the 2024 outage, Hannaford sent customers $10 off a $100 purchase.7 The 2026 version is also worth ten bucks if not more.
My version gives every loyalty member who ordered online in the 90 days before October 12 free pickup or delivery for 30 days and a real dollar amount off their first order back. It has to go out wide because Ahold can’t identify shoppers who switched to Instacart. Instacart has that list, and Ahold doesn’t.
That list matters. Ahold’s US digital sales grew more than 14% last quarter while comparable-store sales grew less than 1%.8
4. Make the owned app the cheaper way to order
Here’s the easiest acquisition pitch in grocery: it costs less in our app. Hardly anyone says it, and Ahold can back it up today.
A WGME investigation checked Hannaford items on Instacart and found every one priced above the shelf, with the full order running more than 12% higher before fees.9 Hannaford told the station that Instacart sets the markup within a range the two agreed on. That’s one banner in one market, but it shows the gap is real and that shoppers mostly can’t see it.
So show it. Put a price comparison in the welcome-back email and on the app’s home screen, and hang a sign at the pickup counter.
Then widen it. Ahold should sit down with Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber Eats this quarter and push each markup range up 3 to 5 points. Every marketplace order costs Ahold a commission and the basket data, and the platform gets to pitch competing banners to Ahold’s own customer.
Stop & Shop sent its shoppers to all three platforms last week. Ahold paid for that customer acquisition and the platforms got to keep it, so asking them to carry more of the cost seems fair to me.
Timing is the part I’d sweat. The new ranges should land the same day as the welcome-back offer, so anyone who notices the higher marketplace price finds a cheaper option already waiting with a discount.
5. Use the stores to sign people up
For a week, the Savings Station kiosks did the app’s job. Giant Food customers used them to activate digital coupons and personalized savings, and Food Lion told shoppers they could activate loyalty coupons the same way.[5]
Anyone who walked up to one of those kiosks wanted the digital deal badly enough to go find it. I’d put an associate there through the holidays with a QR code, permission to set the app up on the customer’s phone, and a free pickup order to try it. The line is simple: you clipped coupons here last week because the app was down, and now you can do it from your couch.
Cashiers should ask every loyalty member without an app account. Then score each store weekly on the share of loyalty members who place an online order with Ahold within 60 days.
Store managers already answer for shrink and labor. Omnichannel conversion can go on the same scorecard, with a bonus attached.
6. Write the plan for next time now
Ahold has now been hit twice in two years. I wouldn’t bet against a third.
When the app went dark last week, the banners improvised. Each one wrote its own make-good, and the outage page sent shoppers to the marketplaces because nobody had built another door.
Start with loyalty. A cashier should be able to pull up any member by phone number and apply rewards at the register, and shoppers should hear on day one that their points still count.
Write the outage page and the first customer email now, get legal to sign off now, and keep them ready to send within an hour. If the page still links to Instacart, Ahold should negotiate today to have that order data return when the outage ends.
A customer Ahold sends to a marketplace during an emergency is still Ahold’s customer, and the contract should say so.
Then test it on purpose. Take one banner’s app down on a slow Tuesday night and see who in the stores and the call center knows what to do. Last week’s post made the same case for freezer controllers, and I’d expect the app drill to turn up just as many blank stares.
If you’re not Ahold, run this test anyway
Ahold has plenty of company here. Most regional chains I’ve worked with run loyalty through an app, push some share of digital orders through Instacart or DoorDash, and have never pulled their own site down to see what breaks.
Start at the register and ask whether a cashier can redeem a member’s rewards with the app down. Then pull up your outage page, if you have one, and see where it sends people. Two harder questions belong in the next marketplace contract review: whether you get the order data back from orders placed during an outage, and whether your customers have any idea your app is cheaper.
Ahold spent eight days finding out its answers in public. You can find out yours in a conference room next week.
“Stop & Shop offers discount as online services remain down after cybersecurity incident.” WWLP: https://www.wwlp.com/news/local-news/stop-shop-offers-discount-as-online-services-remain-down-after-cybersecurity-incident/amp
“Ahold Delhaize says there’s no evidence cybersecurity incident compromised personal data.” Grocery Dive: https://www.grocerydive.com/news/ahold-delhaize-adusa-cybersecurity-update/833414/
“Ahold Delhaize Provides Update on Cybersecurity Incident.” Progressive Grocer: https://progressivegrocer.com/ahold-delhaize-provides-update-cybersecurity-incident
“Stores Stay Open, Loyalty Points Protected.” The Shelby Report: https://theshelbyreport.com/2026/10/19/stores-stay-open-loyalty-points-protected-how-ahold-delhaize-usa-is-managing-its-outage/
“How Ahold Delhaize USA’s banners are reaching shoppers amid outages.” Grocery Dive: https://www.grocerydive.com/news/ahold-delhaize-usa-cybersecurity-website-app-outage-loyalty-programs/833360/
“Stores Stay Open, Loyalty Points Protected.” The Shelby Report: https://theshelbyreport.com/2026/10/19/stores-stay-open-loyalty-points-protected-how-ahold-delhaize-usa-is-managing-its-outage/
“Hannaford coupons online outage.” Grocery Dive: https://www.grocerydive.com/news/hannaford-coupons-online-outage/733587/
“The Friday Checkout.” Grocery Dive: https://www.grocerydive.com/news/the-friday-checkout-ahold-delhaizes-digital-disaster-is-a-customer-retent/833220