Supply chains have faced unforeseen forms of disruption and crises in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical challenges such as military conflicts, and other such issues have forced supply chains to adopt a new paradigm to be prepared to face these fluctuations. This new paradigm goes beyond resilience, which means the ability to return to a pre-crisis state, and requires the chain’s ability to survive and continuously adapt to an endless stream of changes and fluctuations, which is known as resilience. Resilience, beyond the well-known concept of resilience, means the supply chain’s readiness to face unknown types of changes. Given the nascent nature of this concept on the one hand, and the strategic importance of food industry supply chains at the national and international levels, the present study has presented a model of factors affecting the resilience of chains in this industry. Currently, most studies are devoted to operational definitions and applications of sustainability in supply chain decisions, and comprehensive research at the macro and policy level has not been conducted to identify the factors affecting sustainability. The present study, by adopting a combined qualitative-quantitative approach, as one of the first studies, has attempted to extract and explain the factors affecting sustainability in food industry supply chains. In the first step of the research, using a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA strategy, after extracting studies on this concept, the factors mentioned in previous studies were identified. In this step, a total of 20 factors were identified based on previous studies. In order to localize the factors to the country's conditions, in the second step, a group of experts familiar with the concept monitored and screened factors appropriate to the requirements of the food industry through the fuzzy Delphi method. The sampling method used was a snowball type, and based on the principles mentioned in the Delphi sources, a group of 15 experts with relevant backgrounds was identified and participated in the research process. Based on the collection, integration, and analysis of the comments in this step, 15 final factors were identified. Finally, in order to extract the hierarchical pattern governing these factors, the fuzzy interpretive structural modeling method was used. The results of the above steps showed that sustainability in food supply chains is a multi-level evolutionary system. Based on the findings, supply chain sustainability begins with institutional governance and organizational culture, progresses through digital and relational factors, and is implemented through knowledge mechanisms and operational coordination, until finally, logistics resilience, supplier diversity, and strategic assurance inventory are realized in the food industry. Also, the classification of final factors based on the degree of influence and dependence has expressed the profound impact of government support and policy making, along with other factors, as a driver of achieving sustainability in supply chains.