Software supplier cyberattack disrupts Starbucks cafes across North America

In the fallout of a ransomware attack on a software supplier, coffee chain giant Starbucks is now facing disruptions in its ability to pay baristas and manage their schedules across its 11,000-strong network of North American locations, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The WSJ report said one of Starbucks' third-party vendors had an outage beginning late last week. Blue Yonder, a supply chain management software company and independent subsidiary of Panasonic, enables Starbucks employees to view and manage their schedules as well as track hours. The recent outage has disrupted how employees use this service, leaving cafe managers to manually calculate employees' pay.

Blue Yonder does not currently have a timeline for service restoration but has said that the attack did not affect systems running on public cloud-based platforms. In a statement to CBS News, the company affirmed that they have "implemented several defensive and forensic protocols" in response to the attack.

Starbucks is working with Blue Yonder to rectify the issue and reports that the vendor outage hasn't impacted their customer service. The report said the company is now paying employees for their scheduled shifts, meaning they could be overpaid or underpaid depending on the hours baristas actually worked.

"Keeping our partners (baristas) whole despite the outage continues to be our priority, and we're ensuring they will receive pay for all hours worked," Starbucks reportedly said.