Food Scares Can Hurt Restaurants That Had Nothing to Do With an Outbreak

A foodborne illness outbreak does not have to involve a restaurant to hurt its business.

That lesson played out this summer when a Cyclospora outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce sickened more than 1,600 people across five states. Investigators traced the outbreak to Taco Bell, but customer traffic also dropped sharply at several other restaurant chains not linked to the illnesses.

The impact shows how quickly consumer concern can spread beyond the businesses and products actually involved in a food safety investigation.

Once federal officials identified Taco Bell as linked to the outbreak, foot traffic at the chain fell by about 19 percent, according to data from Placer.ai.

That decline might be expected for a restaurant publicly associated with an outbreak. What happened elsewhere was more surprising.

Subway, which investigators did not link to the outbreak, saw customer traffic fall 19.2 percent in a single day. Chopt, a restaurant chain known for salads, experienced a 14.3 percent decline.

Neither chain was implicated in the outbreak.

The numbers suggest that some consumers reacted not simply to the restaurant named in the investigation, but to broader concerns about lettuce and restaurants that prominently use fresh produce.

For businesses caught in that situation, responding can be difficult. A restaurant directly involved in a food safety investigation can remove the suspected product, cooperate with health officials, and inform customers of the corrective steps it has taken.

Businesses that are not involved face a different problem. They may have nothing to recall or correct, yet customers can still associate their food with the product at the center of the news.

The companies connected to the outbreak acted quickly after the problem was identified.

Taco Bell removed the lettuce within days. Its supplier, Taylor Farms de Mexico, recalled all iceberg lettuce from the farm in question.

For other restaurant companies, the challenge became reassuring customers that their ingredients were not connected to the outbreak.

Chipotle, for example, publicly said it did not believe its ingredients were associated with the illnesses.

Such statements can become important when consumers are hearing about an outbreak but may not know which restaurants, suppliers or products are actually involved.

The episode also illustrates the economic reach of a food safety scare. A public warning intended to help consumers avoid a particular contaminated product can affect businesses well beyond the scope of the investigation.

Customers may simply decide to avoid salads, lettuce, or restaurants they associate with those foods until they feel comfortable again.

That reaction can translate almost immediately into fewer people walking through restaurant doors.

For Taco Bell, the decline followed the chain’s public identification in connection with the outbreak. For Subway and Chopt, however, the traffic losses came despite investigators not tying those companies to the illnesses.

The distinction matters for consumers as well as businesses. Foodborne illness investigations often involve specific products, suppliers, production facilities, or batches of food rather than every restaurant serving a similar ingredient.

Cyclospora is a parasite that can cause intestinal illness, and outbreaks associated with fresh produce can draw significant attention because ingredients such as lettuce are widely used by restaurants and consumers.

In this case, more than 1,600 illnesses across five states created enough concern to influence customer behavior beyond the businesses investigators had identified.

The effect may not be permanent.

Analysts expect traffic at restaurant chains that were never connected to the outbreak to recover within a quarter or two as concern fades and customers return to their normal dining habits.

Still, even a temporary decline can be significant for restaurants operating on high customer volume.

The episode offers a broader lesson for restaurants and other food businesses: During a widely reported outbreak, being uninvolved may not be enough to avoid the consequences.

Customers often react first to what they hear — a restaurant name, a particular ingredient or a type of food. The details about where the contaminated product came from and which businesses actually used it can take longer to reach the public.

That leaves uninvolved businesses with the unusual task of responding to a crisis that is not theirs.

For Subway, Chopt and other restaurants that were not linked to the outbreak, the challenge was not removing contaminated food. It was making sure customers understood that distinction.

The outbreak may have started with one supply chain, but the empty tables showed how far consumer concern could travel.