Salad Chains Are Seeing Foot Traffic Drop Over Cyclosporiasis Fears
Fear of explosive diarrhea seems to be scaring customers away from the purveyors of salad in business districts and strip malls across the US.
On Sunday, July 11, as news of a massive cyclospora outbreak—possibly linked to contaminated lettuce—made headlines, traffic at Chop’t fell by 7.1 percent, compared to the chain’s average Sunday traffic in 2026, according to Place.ai data. The same day, foot traffic at Panera Bread was down 7.4 percent and Sweetgreen was down 3.1 percent, compared to those chains’ Sunday averages.
While Placer.ai tells WIRED that it only has “a few days of data to work with,” the company says that the decline of visitors to places with “lettuce-heavy menus” began around July 10.
Industry averages suggest that customers were more likely to ditch salad-heavy chains, with foot traffic across quick-service chains like McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, and Wendy’s up 0.8 percent compared to their average Sunday traffic....
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