United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) reported decreasing sales in both its fiscal Q4 and full-year 2026, which ended Aug. 1, attributing the drop to “adverse impact from planned optimization actions” and “short-term project work.”
CEO Sandy Douglas said UNFI’s progress demonstrates the strength of its customer base. He added that in its fiscal 2027, UNFI is focused on three goals:
- helping its partners grow
- accelerating its operating momentum
- returning to revenue growth
“We’re improving effectiveness and efficiency across the business through next-generation supply chain, technology and productivity initiatives that are steadily improving safety, quality and delivery accuracy for our partners while reducing our operating costs,” Douglas said on UNFI’s Q4 earnings call.
UNFI sales in Q4 2026
In its fiscal Q4 2026, UNFI sales totaled $7.64 billion. That was a slight decrease, 0.7%, from about $7.7 billion the prior-year period.
For its full fiscal 2026, UNFI sales reached $31.15 billion. That was a 2% decrease from $31.78 billion the year before.
UNFI’s Cub Foods locations also saw same-store sales decline in Q4 compared to Q3.
“Excluding our planned optimization actions, short-term project work and the impact of cycling last year’s cyber event, our underlying wholesale sales grew in line with our $90 billion target addressable market,” said chief operating officer Giorgio Tarditi.
In June 2025 — during that year’s fiscal Q4 — UNFI released a string of statements tied to a cybersecurity attack against the company. It said on June 9 that year that it “identified unauthorized activity” in its systems. Within a week of the first statement, it said it was receiving orders and delivering products to its grocery store customers across North America.
“Over the past few days, we’ve made significant progress toward safely restoring our electronic ordering systems, which will allow us to serve the customers that order through these systems in a more automated way and continue to increase our operational capacity,” the company wrote on June 15. “We are also using alternative processes to ensure our customers receive the products they need while we continue making progress to restore our technology capabilities.”
UNFI shared on June 26, 2025, that it had “safely restored the core systems our retail customers and suppliers use to do business with us, and the incident has been contained. With our electronic ordering and invoicing systems back online, we are delivering products to grocery stores across our network at more normalized levels.”
How UNFI is using AI in its supply chain
“We added new AI-enabled features on the UNFI Insights platform to make it easier for our suppliers to assess store-level performance, improve demand planning and achieve their goals,” Douglas said.
In UNFI’s fiscal Q4, it consolidated its facility in Racine, Wisconsin. It also expanded its distribution center in Joliet, Illinois, adding full-case automation. UNFI is in the process of implementing that automation, which involves using robots to fully pack and move boxes, rather than only individual items.
Douglas added that in Q4, UNFI completed the rollout of its AI-powered supply chain and procurement planning platform to all the distribution centers in its network. That has helped to improve fill rates and inventory management while increasing free cash flow, he explained.
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