  Citation: Prataviera, L.B.; Creazza, A.; Melacini, M.; Dallari, F. Heading for Tomorrow: Resilience Strategies for Post-COVID-19 Grocery Supply Chains. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1942. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14041942 Academic Editors: Jurgita Antucheviˇ cien ˙ e and Andrea Appolloni Received: 28 December 2021 Accepted: 3 February 2022 Published: 9 February 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Heading for Tomorrow: Resilience Strategies for Post-COVID-19 Grocery Supply Chains Lorenzo Bruno Prataviera 1,2 , Alessandro Creazza 3, * , Marco Melacini 1 and Fabrizio Dallari 3 1 Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20156 Milan, Italy; lorenzobruno.prataviera@polimi.it or lorenzo.prataviera@cranfield.ac.uk (L.B.P.); marco.melacini@polimi.it (M.M.) 2 Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK 3 School of Industrial Engineering, LIUC University, 21053 Castellanza, Italy; fdallari@liuc.it * Correspondence: acreazza@liuc.it; Tel.: +39-033-157-2527 Abstract: Supply chain resilience is a critical capability needed to compete in the current turbulent and unpredictable business environment, but many companies still tend to underestimate its relevance. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding which supply chain impacts influence the policies and actions undertaken when resilience is concerned is important. This study investigated the relationships between the impacts experienced at the different supply chain tiers during the pandemic, and explored which impacts could drive perceptions towards developing resilience strategies in the future. A survey instrument was developed adopting a mid-range approach, targeting manufacturers active in the Italian grocery supply chain. Data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Results showed that source-related impacts deeply affect make- and delivery-related impacts, and make-related impacts mainly influence the perceptions about future resilience strategies. In fact, manufacturers appear to be primarily interested in those strategies ensuring the continuity of their intrinsic operations. The study could inform theory and practice about companies’ decisions towards the adoption of certain approaches. Also, it highlights promising research avenues related to deepening understanding of how perceptions could predict future intentions to engage in protective actions to adequately cope with potential future disruptions. Keywords: COVID-19; supply chain resilience; survey; grocery industry; risk management; PLS-SEM 1. Introduction Modern supply chains (SCs) are today more vulnerable than ever [1,2], as natural dis- asters, industrial disputes, and terrorism have increasingly resulted in serious disruptions to SC activities [3,4]. Consistently with the ‘era of turbulence’ proclaimed by [5], in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe in a matter of months, jeopardizing lives, upending businesses, and setting off a worldwide economic slump [6,7]. It introduced huge uncertainties in both supply and demand, highlighting the importance for companies to properly handle SC risks [8,9]. However, it also provided rich opportunities for researchers to conduct the empirical and event-based research about supply chain risk management (SCRM) that has been called for several times in the last two decades [6,10]. Consequently, SCRM has gained traction once again, both for practitioners and academics [11]. Being in the ‘era of turbulence’, managing SC risks to reduce vulnerability and ensure business continuity is often problematic [12,13]. SC resilience has been proposed as a critical capability, necessary to regain a new stable position, recovering or returning close to its original state, after perturbations [14,15]. However, the literature suggests that many companies are not well prepared for the challenges they have to confront nowadays [16,17]. Despite the fact that a number of prominent examples led companies to reconsider a structured SCRM approach as an important field of action, the idea that nobody gets credit Sustainability 2022, 14, 1942. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14041942 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability