Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, August 14, 2026
Michael Halen of Bloomberg Intelligence predicts that the recent outbreaks linked to salad ingredients will have a short-lived impact on restaurant sales. He notes that these issues were primarily supply chain related, not food safety handling problems, and historical precedents suggest a quick recovery for affected chains.
“On the Clippy, he called it a mass panic, historic hysteria.”
“I would say fears were overblown. People are cutting back at restaurants that don't even serve iceberg lettuce. You know, because this is not a food safety issue, because because the pathogen and then we also saw salmonella and jalapeno peppers in the last couple of weeks, right, because the pathogen and the bacteria weren't due to food safety handling issues and they were foundings of the supply chain. You know, we think it's going to be relatively short and that's what we've seen.”
“I mean, you know, Taco Bell talked about a minus two percent comp for the month of July and they were closely linked to cyclospora. Chipotle, before the salmonella impacted halopaenos had talked about about a down two percent comp here in the third I'm sorry, about two hundred basis points of impact to their comp in the third quarter. Pava saw some impacts at the beginning of July, but it's steadily increased and now their TOMPs are up mid single digits. So we expected to be really short lived.”