Chipotle responded directly on Friday to several confused Twitter users who thought the chain was closing for good in February.
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More than 500 people are estimated to have become ill after eating in Chipotle restaurants in the second half of 2015.
The Chipotle Mexican Grill food chain plans to close all of its fast food restaurants for one day in February to hold staff meetings about food safety.
“We are hosting a national team meeting to thank our employees for their hard work through this difficult time, discuss some of the food safety changes we are implementing, and answer questions from employees”, Chipotle PR representative Danielle Moore said in a statement, according to NBC.
During the mini-blackout, the company will discuss food safety with all employees due to the E. coli outbreak the chain has been plagued with over the past few months.
Nevertheless, Chipotle has not seen the last of the barrage of lawsuits against the company. In December alone the metric fell by 30 percent.
The trouble began in August when 64 customers in Minnesota were infected with Salmonella and about 100 people were struck by norovirus in southern California. Illnesses contracted at Chipotles were then reported in seven more states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Chipotle took out a full-size print ad in several major nationwide newspapers to apologize for the outbreak, but customer concerns caused the company’s stock to tumble in recent weeks. The norovirus is a highly contagious virus that is spread most commonly through food. At the time of the CDC’s last update, those cases were not considered part of the other E. coli O26 outbreak but could eventually get lumped in to one, two-strain outbreak.
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The Denver-based company also said its financial results will be “messy” this year as it recovers from the food safety crisis, but that it is “extremely confident” that it will eventually get its customers back.
