Now’s a great time to score burritos at Chipotle Mexican Grill.

The lines are short, following the restaurant chain’s health scares. But you can bet Chipotle CMG, -3.19% is being scrubbed squeaky clean, given the spotlight on reports of E. coli and the norovirus. So the food is probably some of the safest around.

I went there last week, partly just for the novelty of breezing through the insanely short lines. So far, so good, health-wise. This doesn’t surprise health experts.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to stop there,” says Robert Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and Harvard-trained medical doctor who served for years as an “epidemic intelligence officer” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Just don’t spend all your money on burritos, because you need to save some for Chipotle stock.

A year from now, it will be a huge stock market outperformer. Here are five reasons why.

Reason 1: People have short memories

“The American consumer is pretty quick to forget these things,” says Jason Moser, an investment manager at The Motley Fool, which owns the stock.

After all, Toyota TM, +0.72% and Ford F, +3.70% bounced back after getting hit hard by safety scares in recent years, points out Irving Schenkler, a professor of management communication at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Johnson & Johnson JNJ, -0.82% was in bad shape years ago because of the Tylenol poisoning scare. I doubt anyone thinks about that now as they reach for the pain reliever in a drug store. No one worries about how well Intel INTC, -0.09% chips handle math, though this was a huge concern hurting the stock years ago.

But exactly how long will you have to wait for memories of Chipotle’s E. coli and norovirus scares to fade? Probably a year. But the stock will rise sooner, so it makes sense to start buying now.

Let’s take a look at the logic here.

In light of Chipotle’s debacle, Credit Suisse analyst Jason West examined the sales trends of four restaurant chains troubled by food scares: Jack in the Box JACK, +1.03% , hit by a 1993 E. coli problem in undercooked beef; Taco Bell, a division of Yum! Brands YUM, -1.16% , hurt by a 1996 E. coli outbreak linked to shredded lettuce; and Kentucky Fried Chicken (also Yum!) and McDonald’s MCD, -0.99% , affected by food-health issues in China in 2012 and 2014.

The bottom line: Sales get hammered the hardest in the quarter the problem happened or the next quarter — if the bad news comes at the end of the quarter or if there is more bad news. Sales then continue below trend for four quarters. Sales turn positive when the problem quarter is lapped. And sales eventually recover completely.

“Historically, these types of food-safety events have had a relatively minor impact on long-term sales,” says West. “In most cases, these brands made a full recovery.”

In short, Chipotle same-store sales are likely to remain negative through the third quarter of this year, but then they will be fine in 2017.

“We expect a strong rebound in 2017, considering the sales trajectory for other brands that have faced similar food safety issues,” says West. He expects 2017 earnings per share of $17.70, which he says would be almost a 40% increase over expected 2016 sales.

When considering stock-entry timing, keep in mind that investors tend to price in trends about six months or more in advance. So, barring new cases beyond the October-November outbreaks (we could still hear about more cases from that time frame), Chipotle’s stock should start to recover well ahead of 2017.

Reason 2: Chipotle has strong brand equity

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch, author of the book “Consumers, Corporations and Public Health,” maintains that “brand equity” is the key factor that determines how fast consumers forgive companies for mishaps. This is basically a measure of how much trust and good will a company has built up over time.

Quelch notes that Suzuki Motor’s Samurai SUV had a tough time recovering years ago from reports that it tended to tip over, because it was a relative newcomer to the U.S. market.

“It had not been around long enough to build up enough brand equity to protect itself against that kind of criticism,” says Quelch.

In contrast, Toyota has recovered from its safety scares related to unwanted acceleration and problems with brakes, because of years of selling cars to satisfied consumers.

“In the end, they were able to ride out that issue,” he says.

Quelch thinks Chipotle is a close call because it is a relatively new brand, and because food-related illnesses are a such black eye for a chain that claims it serves healthier fare, or “food with integrity.” On the other hand, Chipotle has served so many customers in recent years, that gives it enough brand equity to overcome its current problems, says Quelch.

Other marketing experts agree.

“I think they are going to find their way out of it. They started with a good reputation,” says Dave Reibstein, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“They are very lucky to have built up a reservoir of trust over time,” agrees Schenkler, at NYU. “They have reputational capital, which gives them a well of good will. So once media coverage erodes, things will get back to where they were.”

Reason 3: Chipotle has the right management

Some of the best companies to invest in, invariably, are the ones that continue to be managed by their founders. Think Amazon AMZN, -2.25% , Google, now known as Alphabet GOOGL, -1.65% , and Netflix NFLX, -2.82% — all companies I’ve suggested over the years in my stock letter, Brush Up on Stocks, in part because they are founder-managed.

Founders tend to have a passion for success, as much as for money. So as long as they are around, it’s a pretty safe bet they will continue to innovate and deal with challenges. Academic studies on founder-run companies bear this out.

Chipotle fits the mold, since founder Steve Ells is still in charge as chairman and co-CEO.

“If there is one management team you want to deal with a crisis like this, the team at Chipotle is up high on the list,” says Moser, at The Motley Fool. “I have a hard time believing they won’t be able to manage their way through this.”

Reason 4: Chipotle is poised to launch a marketing blitz

Chipotle is currently working with one hand tied behind its back. As a consumer company, it wants to get out there and market the heck out of its product. It already has a plan in place, no doubt.

But it also knows that until the CDC issues its final reports on the outbreak, it has to stay in a holding pattern.

“We continue to believe a recovery is largely dependent on the CDC closing the investigation,” says Goldman Sachs analyst Karen Holthouse, who has a “buy” rating on the stock. “They don’t want to say the problem is fixed, only to have more CDC headlines about past cases confusing consumers.”

We may never know conclusively what caused the outbreak. And that raises questions about the quality of Chipotle’s tracking and control systems, says Martin Bucknavage, a food-safety expert at the Department of Food Science at Penn State University. Part of the problem may be that Chipotle grew too fast and uses so many local suppliers, says Lawrence, at Johns Hopkins University.

“Chipotle, in a way, is a victim of its own success,” he says.

But Chipotle also probably has a fix that will be convincing to consumers.

“Right now, sales are suffering because they haven’t conducted a PR blitz yet,” says Matthew Goodman, of Praetorian Capital Management. “But when they go on the offensive after figuring out a new process, the commercials will be feel-good, and people will return. Chipotle will do just fine.”

Reason 5: Chipotle is cheap

This is a tougher case to make, given that Chipotle has a trailing price earnings ratio of 24 and its sales are in free fall. But here’s one way to look at it.

Chipotle has a price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of around 1.5, says Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst David Tarantino. That’s at the low end of the typical PEG ratio range of 1.5 to 2 for consumer companies with what he calls “scarce” growth, or particularly high growth.

Tarantino keeps Chipotle in this rarified category because he thinks once the dust settles, the company can produce 20% earnings growth. He says it will get there through a combination of low double-digit store growth, mid-single-digit same-store sales growth, margin growth and share buybacks.

“We believe the business ultimately will recover from this issue,” he says. Tarantino thinks Chipotle may eventually have 5,000 outlets, compared with around 2,000 today.

True, Chipotle sales growth slowed markedly even before the health issues, partly because its success attracted so much competition. But it has gone through relative slumps in the past, only to recover. One way to fend off competitors now will be to roll out new menu items, says Kevin Carter, who manages Restaurant US:BITE, an exchange traded fund in the eatery sector.

Risks

No stocks are completely safe and, of course, there are risks here. The big one: If new E. coli cases pop up outside of the October-November time frame when the first one struck, all bets are off.

“They need to stay out of the headlines,” says Moser, at The Motley Fool.

At the time of publication, Michael Brush had no positions in any stocks mentioned in this column. Brush is a Manhattan-based financial writer who publishes the stock newsletter, Brush Up on Stocks. Brush has covered business for the New York Times and The Economist group, and he attended Columbia Business School in the Knight-Bagehot program.