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Cyclospora outbreak reshapes grocery shopping and restaurant traffic beyond recalled lettuce
['Elizabeth Crawford']
FoodNavigator.com
According to new data from the rewards platform Fetch, sales of fresh lettuce declined 10%, fresh salad mixes 23% and salad kits 27% in the last two weeks.
“The pullback was even steeper by shopper count, with 25% fewer Fetch users buying fresh lettuce and roughly 40% fewer purchasing salad mixes and kits.
The findings suggest consumers may not simply be avoiding the implicated lettuce – they appear to be pulling back across the fresh salad category,” according to a company spokesperson.
Some shoppers are replacing fresh produce purchases with frozen, suggests Fetch data that show a 17% increase in frozen vegetable sales in the same period.
Restaurant chains also are seeing a significant decline in foot traffic following the outbreak in recent weeks, according to data from Placer.ai.