Get your one-dollar bills ready.
Taco Bell is rolling out a $1 menu item to try and help people forget about the whole iceberg-lettuce-linked explosive diarrhea ordeal.
On Wednesday, the fast food giant announced plans to sell Enchiritos for $1 on Friday. The the offer will be available while supplies last in participating locations, via its app, or website between 8 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PT.
Enchiritos typically cost between $3.99 to $4.29, depending on location. They’re a mix between an enchilada and a burrito, and crucially, they’re lettuce-free.
“For the ones who’ve been riding with us $1 Enchiritos just dropped,” read a TikTok video promoting the deal.
The campaign came after the FDA said on July 16 Thursday that shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia was linked to at least 1,644 cyclosporiasis cases between May 13 and July 13. The Cyclospora parasite causes the illness.
Foot traffic at Taco Bell and other restaurants where lettuce is a staple menu item fell as news of the outbreak spread, according to data from the location intelligence firm Placer.ai.
The stock price of Yum! Brands Inc., which owns Taco Bell, fell from a five-month high of $167 on July 7 to $147 on July 17, the day after the FDA’s announcement.
On Tuesday, Taco Bell’s CEO, Sean Tresvant, shared a LinkedIn post thanking fans, whom he said supported the company during the outbreak.
“The community that said, ‘we’ve got you.’ The fans who said they ‘can’t quit us.’ We appreciate every bit of that energy. Thank you,” he wrote.
Tresvant said that moving forward, the company would put safety first and continue to be transparent about “what we know and what we are doing next.”
Taylor Farms, Taco Bell’s lettuce supplier, has been criticized for how it communicated information about the outbreak to the public.
In a statement on Monday, Taylor Farms said there had been “significant confusion over outbreak communication,” and broke down the facts of the outbreak. PR veterans told Business Insider’s Sarah E. Needleman and Tim Paradis that prior to Taylor Farm’s statement, its approach to the outbreak muddied an already confusing situation. Taylor Farms didn’t respond to a request for comment from Needleman and Paradis.
