🥗 Green in the red

Fast casual salad chain Sweetgreen saw its stock drop 29% over the past month despite not having direct ties to the contaminated greens. In July, the company cut its full year outlook over the widespread consumer anxiety over fresh produce. Taco Bell’s parent company Yum! Brands have fallen 8% and foot traffic fell 20% even before the CDC’s official announcement linking Taco Bell’s contaminated lettuce to parasite outbreak. 

Meanwhile, salmonella-tainted jalapeños have begun making headlines. This week, the CDC flagged the outbreak coming from Mexican-grown jalapeños which has spread across 27 states. Chains like Chipotle and Qdoba pulled the peppers from their menus but are still taking losses — Chipotle’s shares fell nearly 10% on August 4 after Bloomberg News reported the chain removed the jalapeños. 

The Takeaway 

Food-borne outbreaks hurt sales, eroding consumer trust in brands. In earnings calls over the past several weeks, even chains that weren’t initially directly affected by cyclospora had to answer questions from analysts. “We're not impacted, or we are impacted from a sales perspective, but we're not involved in the Cyclospora conversation today,” said Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright in July. 

“Exiting Q2, we saw near-term sales impacts related to broad concerns around lettuce and fresh produce consumption due to the Cyclospora outbreak,” said Brett Schulman, co-founder and CEO of Cava, who added the company is not directly affected by the recent Salmonella outbreak. “We have since seen same-restaurant sales begin to rebound, a testament to the underlying strength of our long-term brand proposition.”

Despite concerns over produce, Cava was the breakaway winner of the fast casual chains this earnings season, bucking the trend. The chain saw guest traffic increase by 5.3% over Q2 and adjusted EBITDA climbed 30% to $54.7 million.

“We know consumer trust in the food system does not come easy right now, and it should not be taken for granted by anyone in this industry.” 

- Paige Oamek

• 📊 Election: Today is the election day in Clacton in the United Kingdom, where all major parties have bowed out except Count Binface — a man with a garbage can on his head who contests elections as a serial comedic candidate — takes on the person who resigned the seat, Nigel Farage. Markets think there’s a 38% chance* Binface pulls in at least a quarter of the vote. 

• 🎬Movie: “Coyote vs. Acme,” the movie that was thrown into a vault by Warner Bros. Discovery to get a tax credit and eventually sold off to distributor Ketchup Entertainment, is getting some outstanding buzz; prediction markets are pricing in a 75% chance it has a Rotten Tomatoes score above 90.

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

Bob Iger and Josh Kushner have bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion. Listen, if you want to take a beloved Los Angeles institution that’s a decade out of its “Renaissance” and give it to a guy who can guarantee it underperforms the overall market by 40% over the course of two decades, Bob Iger is certainly your man. Enjoy the ride of a lifetime, Lakers fans. 

• Producer Price Index

• Q2 productivity

• Earnings from Applied Materials, Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., Figure Technology Solutions, Intuitive Machines, Tapestry, Ondas, and Gemini Space Station.