CO OP Completely Empty

[Thegirlinthegreenscarf]

How's your local Co Op ? Ours is mostly empty apart from a few bits here and there on various shelves. Fridges are completely empty. I think Co Op have handled this situation shocking, in our area we didn't know anything was wrong as they said they had fridge issues and deliveries were late arriving. I popped in after work for gin thankfully they had that or I would have lost my shit at those cyber hackers 😅

M&S sent an email apologising and updates. Nothing like that from Co Op not even an apology email for our data being stolen 🙄

Rural Scotland. Fruit and veg and fresh produce was in short supply yesterday but looks pretty normal today.

Bit less in terms of volume but reasonable selection as far as it ever goes.

Quite - there's always a simple answer.

But people have no bloody clue - as indeed did Boris!

OP, what does it matter WHY the shelves are empty?

The stock isn't going to magically appear in the stores, just because you want it to, regardless of whether the reason is down to the cyber attack, distribution issues or broken fridges!
If it's not there it's not there! And there's obviously going to be a reason for it, which can't be helped.

I wouldn't have thought it would be too much of a strain for shop managers to create lists of "essentials" they need on their shelves and to place orders with alternative local wholesalers like Booker, Costco etc who deliver directly from their warehouses to stores, That's how it works for lots of independent shops. At least it would get some stock into the stores as a temporary "fix". As it is, there's no point going to a Co Op because they've virtually nothing to sell. People aren't even going to go in to buy things they do have because they'll be going to other shops instead for essentials that their Co Op doesn't have.

As for communicating, there's not even a poster on the door at our local Co Op explaining lack of stock and no notices on tills etc - not everyone is on the Co Op Facebook or Twitter pages - what do Co Op managers and staff expect if they're getting lots of queries and angry customers if they can't even be bothered to make hand written signs to put up around the store?

As for back up systems, it would be pretty simple for either the store or the distribution depts to keep paper printouts of orders/sales, even if only for the last few deliveries - no need to keep a mountain of paper for years worth. Just enough for back up data if their systems fail. Perhaps that kind of thing will become part of disaster recovering planning in the future?

One of my clients is a large convenience store franchise under the Tesco "One Stop" brand. On the rare occasion that Tesco delivery/warehouse lets him down, he just puts an order in with the Booker Cash N Carry - perhaps Co Op managers should have been given that kind of localised/emergency powers when the supply chain is disrupted,

As it is, Co Op will be suffering massive financial and reputational damage not only because of the hacking, but because of their very poor response at the coal face in their shops.

Co op want to keep it quiet because it's bad publicity and may encourage others to try attacks. There may have been some senior failings behind the scenes as well. Easy to see that while people are frightened of nuclear war, hacking is v.much a threat. Disrupt supply chains, shut down banking eg cash machines. Throw in the threat of a chemical agent as at Salisbury and who can you blame? Hackers, Russia, N.Korea? The Germans used u boats to try to cut off supplies, now disrupting cyber systems can do the same and it's invisible and can be done from anywhere with an internet connection

I wouldn't have thought it would be too much of a strain for shop managers to create lists of "essentials" they need on their shelves and to place orders with alternative local wholesalers like Booker, Costco etc who deliver directly from their warehouses to stores,

If the hack has affected payment systems within Co op, would you take that order as a wholesaler?

What do you do about pricing and margins if Booker only has a brand of cookies that you don’t currently stock? Or their wholesale price is higher?

Of course your local guy can do things differently because he owns the store, ultimately.

You can’t pull out of years of systems set up one way and redo in a day or two.

I think saying ‘they can easily order from somewhere else’ massively fails to understand the processes and structures that underpin national organisations with hundreds of stores. Who is to say the store manage even has the ability to make payments, as they wouldn’t normally need to? Or that HQ even has that ability right now?

We have no systems to purchase from elsewhere. We can’t just rock up at a cash n carry with a shopping list! Can’t do anything online. And even if we could get stock elsewhere, we’d have to add everything to our system manually (also can’t do that!) and add barcodes to the system…..which has been hacked! We’re stuck until this is fixed. Stock has started coming through to us but it’s really random!

For someone styling him/herself “taxguru” I’m surprised that PP doesn’t get that complex commercial and financial systems are… complex.

I spoke to my local Co Op manager this week and she was almost in tears. Witnessed a customer getting annoyed with the lack of stock and I wished her good luck.

It's an awful attack on the computer systems. It will take a lot of time to restore and recover. Please bear in mind those working there. They are under enormous stress.

We’ve had little issue (so far!) with customers in my store. Most have been really understanding about it. I’ve had a couple of people tutting at me when I explain why we have no milk left (what little we are getting sells fast!) but so far it’s been fine.

It’s upsetting to see it all going on though. It’s going to take weeks to sort out and probably cost the company a fortune. And then they’ll have to start looking at how they can recoup the money lost….

Bet the cyber criminals are loving the added bonus of not even getting the blame for the chaos they've caused because people would rather shout at till staff and store managers because there isn't a sign explaining the blatantly obvious that the shelves are empty.

It's not a "day or two". It's something like two weeks now. Co Op head office have had plenty of time to enter into credit/payment terms with wholesalers. But, their "emergency planning" should have a procedure written up and ready to go when something entirely foreseeable like this happens.

They don't need to replace the entire product range. Of course there'll be things they can't source that are identical to their core product range. But they'd certainly be able to pretty quickly source a good range, i.e. fruit & veg, bread, milk, that could be sold via the tills pretty quickly and simply. Probably over half their product range would be replicatable from other sources.

It's the usual poor attitude that we suffer from in the UK. No resilience and no "plan B" for when the shit hits the fan. Just like train break downs, airport fog, motorway accidents. Everything is just left to sort it itself out with little or not actual "customer service" from the organisations involved.

I've dealt with "complex" systems for my entire 40+ years working life. Even the smallest of businesses give thought to what happens if the "computer says no" ever since the earliest days of computers in the 80s, like Commodore PETS. A small private business simply couldn't survive a catastrophic failure like this, so they build in alternative systems and backups.

Even in my own small practice, I'm fully computerised, but we still have basic/simple paper files so that we can (and have done) continue to operate with system failures, power cuts, etc. OK, not at full 100% productivity and efficiency but we could still do our clients' weekly payrolls which we had highlighted as the ultra important work we do so we had robust recovery systems and manual alternative systems in place. If a tiny little "hick" firm can do it, then huge firms with huge resources can do it!

When I worked in industry as financial director, hundreds of staff, multi million pound turnover, everything was computerised, ordering, stocks, sales, production planning, etc., but we still had backup/disaster recovery plans that meant we could continue if the systems were down/power cuts etc. Again, not at full capacity etc., but if an order was critical and the customer needed it at a particular site on a particular date, we knew we could do it, one way or another. We were in the Worldwide Oil and Gas Industry and failure to supply a critical component at the right time was critical - our contracts put us on the hook for huge damages/compensation if we didn't - so it was baked into our thinking and systems to make sure that whatever happened, we'd manufacture and deliver on time! (Damages/compensation could be tens of millions if our failure meant a gas or oil platform couldn't start up on the appointed date!).

I have "the conversation" regularly with my clients - I constantly bang on about back ups, duplicated systems, paper based backup reports, etc.

Obviously not an individual store level, but it could have been achieved at national level with Head Office negotiating with Head Office of wholesalers and other suppliers etc. Or paper based systems implemented to order a core range of products from their existing suppliers. It's not been a day or two. It's been two weeks or more. How many more weeks will it take? How long before they wake up and smell the coffee to make alternative arrangements?

How come other shops e.g. Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Tesco are not having cyber attacks? What are they doing that Co-op and M&S are not?

Well, it might yet happen - Co op was after m and s, IIRC.

Every business out there is targeted at some time or another.

They will be having attempted attacks but probably have better systems to track and stop them. Someone within the Co Op has been asleep on the job. Could be anything really. Internet routers not set up properly re security, anti virus software not updated, using outdated operating systems, lack of security on individual workstations/laptops, the list is endless really as to how the virus got in.

As with terrorism, the hackers only have to be “lucky” once.

DH and his team deal with such matters (not in retail) and it can be quiet for a while and then relentless. I don’t know enough about the co op situation to say things like “someone was asleep on the job” - as with all systems, 100% guarantee against any failure might well have been either impossible or prohibitively costly.

be careful as there may well be attacks there

I was actually thinking it’s a good job that the hackers haven’t targeted all the supermarkets simultaneously….but the danger is in the future what if that happens??! Imagine all the shops having run out of food for weeks on end. The Covid shortages would pale in comparison!

How do you know they haven't? Or might be happening this weekend. Customers incl me have no idea of how systems are integrated and in clouds. Paper copies? Kept where and by whom and how are these stored/secured? IT security costs money and relies on every part of the system being secure. 3rd party suppliers might be vulnerable and the hacking is targeted that way

We had a delivery today. Nowhere near our normal size but at least we had vegetables milk and cream which is what was needed. I got to work at 6am.went out at 6.20 and the Menzies man was there with the newspapers and the Co op delivery man. I looked at them both. I said to the Menzies man.. "Im pleased to see you!" Then to the Co op driver "IM VERY VERY PLEASED TO. SEE YOU!! 🤣 🤣 🤣 Our customers have been lovely about it all thank goodness.. 💕 💕 💕

We live semi rural and our only local shop (co-op) is bare of any fresh produce and has been for a week. Ok if you desperately need cocktail sticks or squash but not for anything else. & No news as to when any new stock is going to arrive. I feel for the many elderly in the villiage who rely heavily on this shop.

Wasn't much on the shelves at my local Coop a couple of days ago, they had some notices up saying there was issues with stock.
I'm a Coop member and haven't heard anything from them I don't use social media so wouldn't have seen any Facebook updates. Communication has been poor - when it first came to light they seemed to play it down but seems it could be more serious than first anticipated.