Brown rice or white?” the server asks amidst a flurried assembly line of latex gloves and steel spoons. “Black or pinto? Salsa, sour cream, cheese, lettuce?” The familiar battery of questions keeps me alert, while one of the most efficient machines of modern dining churns out my burrito on a Thursday evening in Longmont, Colorado.

Ahead of me, a woman has just ordered a burrito bowl, a salad and three kid’s meals served up in compostable sectioned trays. Behind me, a line of customers stretches forty-some feet to the door. From where I’m standing, $8.00 burrito in hand, business seems strong after what anyone would call a rough year for the giant burrito giant. I bite into my burrito just over a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared an end to the multistage E. coli outbreak that shook the company in the final quarter of 2015.

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