Olive Garden was forced to pause summer ad push for unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks after the deadly cyclospora outbreak spooked diners

“During the quarter, Olive Garden was prepared to communicate about one of its core brand equities, unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks, but quickly pivoted away from their planned marketing support in response to external events that led to broader consumer concern about lettuce,” Darden Restaurants CEO Rick Cardenas said.

Unlike Taco Bell, Olive Garden’s restaurants were not directly involved in the outbreak. But the chain was hurt by public concerns nonetheless, Nation’s Restaurant News reported. Olive Garden’s same-store sales — a key metric in the industry — for the quarter ending Aug. 30 rose 1%, the lowest growth reported by the chain since 2024.

Olive Garden will now run the campaign in the current quarter instead, in order to draw diners into its restaurants during weekday lunch, which Cardenas said remains a “meaningful opportunity for the brand.”

Growing list of government recalls

On Sept. 11, the CDC announced that the cyclospora outbreak had ended. The outbreak led to nearly 20,000 cases, more than 1,000 hospitalizations and two deaths. The CDC however said that the number of cases is likely higher than the number reported.

The outbreak — which caused symptoms like watery diarrhea, loss of appetite and weight loss — drew much media coverage, amid what feels like more frequent recalls by the Food and Drug Administration and United States Department of Agriculture this year. But federal data shows that the number of recalls is on par with the past few years, and actually lower per year than the previous decade.

Still, the size of the cyclospora outbreak felt unheard of. By comparison, there were only 1,180 cases reported in 2025 during cyclospora season (between May 1 and Aug. 31.), the CDC says.

Janet Hamilton, Executive Director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, told Time Magazine that she wouldn’t necessarily say there are more outbreaks in 2026.

“However, what I would say is the scale and magnitude of outbreaks that we’re facing right now are unprecedented,” Hamilton said.

While health officials are able to more easily detect food safety issues than in past decades, health departments at the state and federal level have undergone significant decreases in staffing and funding.

“Health departments are mounting responses quickly, but when the outbreaks need additional sustained surge support, the system is quickly overwhelmed,” Hamilton said. “That leads to situations like what we have seen with Cyclospora.”

As the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also blamed over the summer for the handling of the Cyclospora outbreak.

In August, ABC News reported that Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to Kennedy Jr. asking for more information about what she called the government’s “calamitous” response to the outbreak.

“As Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), you are responsible for overseeing the federal government’s response to this outbreak,” Warren wrote. “Yet, the administration’s handling of this crisis has been marred by missteps that raise serious questions about its decision-making.”