In Episode 10 of Season 3 of The Risk Wheelhouse, hosts Ori Wellington and Sam Jones go deep into a case that should make every executive sit up straight: the June 2025 cyberattack on United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI). As the primary distributor for Whole Foods, UNFI represents a critical node in the North American food supply chain—and when that node collapsed, the results were immediate and jarring: empty shelves, viral photos, panicked customers, and a $300 million hit to UNFI’s market value.

But this episode isn’t just about groceries. It’s a cautionary tale for every industry.

💥 When Optimization Becomes Fragility

What makes this case so revealing is how it exposes the illusion of resilience—a modern trap where over-optimized systems appear efficient on the surface, but are held together by a single vulnerable thread. UNFI’s downfall wasn’t a unique failure. It was a structural one, a feature—not a bug—of a model obsessed with just-in-time logistics and single-source efficiency. As Sam Jones bluntly puts it, “Concentration breeds collapse.”

Whether it’s a cloud provider, a claims processor, or an AI risk engine, the same brittleness exists across industries. And the blind spot? These dependencies are often invisible until it’s far too late.