PHOENIX (AP) — It’s been a choppy year for restaurants that lean into lettuce.

Lettuce prices rose sharply in the first half of 2026 due to hot weather in Arizona, where about one-third of America’s lettuce is grown. Now, restaurants are dealing with the fallout from a cyclospora outbreak linked to shredded lettuce that has sickened thousands of Americans.

Taco Bell will likely see the biggest sales impact from the outbreak, which began in late June. Federal health officials first tied the outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. Later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said customers in Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania were also affected.

Taco Bell said on July 17 that it had voluntarily removed shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms from its U.S. restaurants. But its customer volume has suffered. As of July 23, Taco Bell visits were 21% lower than average across the U.S., according to Placer.ai, a market research company.

Cases have continued to grow, however, and it’s becoming clear that Taco Bell wasn’t the outbreak’s sole source, said Craig Hedberg, a food safety researcher at the University of Minnesota. As the FDA investigation progresses, officials should get a better understanding of which illnesses are connected and “how complex this outbreak actually has become.”

In the meantime, consumers remain cautious. Foot traffic at Chopt, a salad-focused chain with 105 locations, was down 12% as of July 23, according to Placer.ai. M Science, another market research firm, found that weekly spending at the salad chain Sweetgreen dropped 10 percentage points compared to last year during the first half of July.

Chopt didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Sweetgreen, which has 285 U.S. locations, did not confirm a drop in sales and said in a statement that its food hasn’t been connected to the current cyclospora outbreak.

“We follow rigorous food safety standards and can trace our ingredients from restaurant to farm,” the company said.

The outbreak came on top of an already difficult year for the lettuce industry and people who love eating salads. The retail price of a pound of iceberg lettuce jumped nearly 20% between January and June of this year, according to government data. Consumers paid an average of 33% more last month for all fresh lettuce compared to a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

Lettuce prices advertised by major grocery stores last week averaged $1.86 for a head of iceberg, 25 cents more than the same week a year earlier, according to the USDA. A head of red leaf lettuce cost 52 cents more at $1.66, and a bunch of romaine had an advertised price of $2.49 — $1.55 higher, the department reported.

Shoppers caught a break with some types of salad mixes, though, which stores advertised at prices 7 to 24 cents cheaper than a year prior, the USDA said.

Elizabeth Canales, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Mississippi State University, said unusually hot weather in Arizona early in the year caused crops to mature too early. That caused big supply gaps until California production began in late April.

Fuel costs, which increased after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran and Iran blocked most oil tankers from leaving the Persian Gulf, have also been an issue, according to Canales. Lettuce is especially perishable and requires energy for cooling from the time it’s picked to the time it’s sold, Canales said.

“The cold chain needs to be maintained. Cooling and transporting it is very important,” Canales said.

Lettuce has been linked to multiple food poisoning outbreaks in the past, including two in 2018 involving E. coli linked to romaine lettuce grown in Arizona and California.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve policymakers are losing patience with inflation, but they may not be ready to turn their frustration into action — not this week anyway.

Meeting in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday, the Fed is expected to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged. Members of the central bank’s rate-setting committee may not be so reluctant to act when they gather again next Sept. 15-16.

Inflation has been stuck above the Fed’s 2% target for more than five years. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told Congress earlier this month that he had “no tolerance’’ for elevated inflation. Warsh is presiding over his second policy meeting this week.

Fed watchers Joseph Egelhof and Guneet Dhingra at BNP Paribas Securities say it’s possible Warsh’s central bank will “release the kraken’’ with a “shock rate hike’’ this week; more likely, they wrote in a commentary, policymakers will hold off, reluctant to risk disrupting financial markets that aren’t expecting a rate increase yet.

Policymakers may also want to see more economic data: On Thursday, the Commerce Department delivers the first look at April-June economic growth and issues the Fed’s preferred inflation measure – the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index – for June.

Overall, only 29% of Wall Street traders predict that the Fed will raise rates this week. But 76% foresee a rate hike in September. A month ago, only 59% of traders expected a September rate increase, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

“Policymakers’ patience with high and persistent inflation is broadly exhausted, meaning there is a significant risk’’ of a rate hike in September, Egelhof and Dhingra wrote.

Casting uncertainty over the Fed’s decision-making is the Iran war. The price of oil briefly blasted past $100 a barrel last week on intensifying fighting. It’s since settled down on hopes the United States and Iran can find some way to reduce tensions.

After the U.S. and Israel attacks on Feb. 28, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz – through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas pass. That caused the greatest disruption in oil supplies in history and sent energy prices surging. They’ve since bobbed up and down depending on the ever-changing state of the conflict and negotiations to de-escalate it.

Now Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen are attacking shipping in the Red Sea, attempting to stop tankers carrying Saudi Arabian oil from passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The uncertainty puts the Fed’s inflation fighters in a bind.

“Sure, it is possible that the latest rise in prices is a transient blip that will reverse in a heartbeat. Then again, it seems equally that the war with Iran will get worse, that the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab will remain blockaded for months or longer, and that energy prices will continue to trend up,’’ Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary.

“Should the (Fed) set monetary conditions on a hope that oil prices will reverse course and stay low … or should a central bank eschew wishful thinking and do its job of minimizing the probabilities that inflation will exceed target?’’

Inflation has exceeded the Fed’s 2% target since early 2021 when the U.S. economy overheated as it roared back from COVID-19 lockdowns. Inflation peaked at just over 9% in mid-2022 and began to drop in the face of 11 rate hikes by the Fed in 2022 and 2023. But progress has more or less stalled.

Besides the Iran war, other factors adding to inflation pressure are President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods and a surge of investment in data centers to power artificial intelligence, which is driving up the cost of computer chips and equipment and electricity.

So-called core inflation – which excludes volatile food and energy prices – cooled in June, partly because apartment rents aren’t rising as fast as they had been. And a temporary drop in gasoline prices last month also helped contain overall inflation.

But several Fed policymakers have been arguing that the Fed will have to raise rates to return inflation to the 2% target.

“Sternly staring at inflation until it melts before our withering gaze is not an option,’’ Christopher Waller, an influential member of the Fed’s governing board, said in a speech this month.