Restaurants that rely heavily on lettuce are facing a double blow this year, with soaring prices colliding with a nationwide Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened thousands of people.
The outbreak, which began in late June, was initially linked by federal health officials to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.
The Food and Drug Administration later expanded the list to include Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania as investigators traced the outbreak further.
Taco Bell voluntarily removed shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms from its U.S. restaurants on July 17.
The outbreak has already taken a toll on customer traffic. According to market research firm Placer.ai, visits to Taco Bell locations nationwide had fallen 21% by July 23.
Food safety expert Craig Hedberg of the University of Minnesota said the growing number of cases suggests Taco Bell was not the only source of contaminated lettuce.
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"As more cases have emerged, it has become clear this is a more complex outbreak," he said, adding that the FDA investigation is likely to identify additional sources.
The scare has also hurt other salad-focused chains, even though they have not been linked to the outbreak.
Placer.ai found customer visits to Chopt, which has about 105 locations, were down 12% by July 23. Market research firm M Science also reported that weekly spending at Sweetgreen dropped about 10 percentage points during the first half of July compared with the same period last year.
Sweetgreen, which operates about 285 U.S. restaurants, said none of its food has been connected to the outbreak.
"We follow rigorous food safety standards and can trace our ingredients from restaurant to farm," the company said.
The food safety concerns come after months of rising lettuce prices.
Government data shows the retail price of iceberg lettuce climbed nearly 20% between January and June. Overall fresh lettuce prices were about 33% higher last month than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Last week, grocery stores advertised iceberg lettuce for an average of $1.86 per head, up 25 cents from the same week in 2025. Red leaf lettuce averaged $1.66, up 52 cents year over year, while romaine sold for about $2.49 a bunch, roughly $1.55 more than last year. Some packaged salad mixes, however, were slightly cheaper than a year ago.
Elizabeth Canales, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Mississippi State University, said unusually hot weather in Arizona earlier this year caused lettuce crops to mature too quickly, creating supply shortages before California's harvest ramped up in late April.
She also said higher fuel costs have added to prices because lettuce requires constant refrigeration from harvest to store shelves, making transportation significantly more expensive.
The latest outbreak highlights lettuce's long history of food safety problems. In 2018, romaine lettuce was linked to two major E. coli outbreaks tied to growing regions in Arizona and California.
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