Taco Bell - An essay about Taco Bell. PDF

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An essay about Taco Bell....

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Taco Bell is the world's most innovative restaurant. Not only have they dominated the fast food market in their category, they routinely push the envelope and succeed in creating Blockbuster fast food items that have a wide reaching cultural impact.

There is simply nothing like having a late night hunger spell and deciding you want to chow down on some nachos, tacos, and burritos. Taco Bell, the most popular Mexican restaurant in the world, was made for situations like this.

While some may consider Taco Bell a culturally appropriated, Americanized insult to Mexican food, people's wallets don't seem to care. Taco Bell earns billions of dollars worldwide in revenue, and offers some of the least expensive fast food items in the market.

“There’s no silver bullet,” Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed said on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call, when asked to explain Taco Bell’s success. “That team, led by [President of Taco Bell North America] Julie Masino, is just doing a great job across the board.” Creed said that Taco Bell is winning in every category that it competes. The brand is a leader on value, technology innovation, and franchisees are happy with the restaurant-level margins that Taco Bell delivers. Taco Bell’s system-wide operating profit margin was 31.9 percent in 2018.” (Skift)

I think Taco Bell is fantastic, personally. I don't know many other restaurants where $10 can get you a meal that can last almost all day long. One of the exciting elements about the restaurant

is it's constantly evolving menu, compared with many of its legacy items, such as the iconic double-decker taco.

Some of its innovations have quickly reached iconic status, offering hefty competition to other players in the market. The Doritos nachos taco has been one of these examples.

“The menu hits have kept coming since 2012, when Taco Bell rocked fans’ worlds with the groundbreaking Doritos Locos Taco, a taco shell–Doritos mashup that went on to sell 100 million units in its first 10 weeks. “You can think that Doritos Locos Tacos is a novelty item, but based on how many we have sold and how much our consumers love them, they’re not novelty,” Friebe says.” (QSR)

Innovation is part of what makes Taco Bell an iconic worldwide brand, and its willingness to take risks, advertise heavily, develop great partnerships, and more. Taco Bell knows exactly what it is: fun, not attempting to be artisan or sophisticated, clever, and accessible. Very few restaurants in the fast food world have been able to fit this mold so well. Berger chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King have responded to the craft and artisan burger movement by attempting to brand themselves as having craft and artisan touches and flares, and this has proven awkward and pretentious, given that these restaurants generally maintain their perception as simply fast food joints.

Taco Bell knows it's a fast food joint, and it embraces its identity with clever twists, and doesn't try to blend itself in with more sophisticated forms of food in the same category, such as advertising craft or artisan tacos, which is an immensely popular growing category on its own. One example of its simple, grassroots commitment to trying to satisfy its customers the most and keep room for growth is its removal of several vegetarian items from its menu, even though a niche group of vegetarian Taco Bell fans dislike the move. In a statement, the restaurant explained that the menu simplification was designed to create room for future, novel menu items, and to “ensure an easy and fast ordering experience for our guests and team members.” It’s easier to reliably and quickly churn out a smaller number of menu items, so there are efficiency gains to menu-shortening. (Matthews)

Once again, Taco Bell knows its audience, and they know that it's audience is looking for constant, clever changes to the menu that maintain the simplicity, in expansiveness, and charm of Taco Bell's offerings. Unlike McDonald's or Burger King, which haven't released an item as big or popular as the big Mac or the whopper in over half a century, Taco Bell has spun out multiple legacy items within the last 30 years, and wants to leave room to allow the innovation and growth and risk-taking to continue taking place. As in the example of the Doritos taco above, Taco Bell knows that it's only one moment of inspiration way from the next big hit. And that's what keeps customers coming, in their estimation.

“At Taco Bell headquarters in Irvine, California, a team of chefs and food scientists spend their days developing a seemingly endless list of new items, each one more bizarre yet strangely appealing than the last. How the food will look in pictures is always on their minds. "We want people to talk about it, and blog about it, and get excited, and share their pictures," Matthews said. "We can always make food taste good. But, how do you get that twist that makes it a part of people's lives instead of just eating?"

The culinary team keeps tabs on the most-Instagrammed Taco Bell menu items. At the top of the list is the brand's brightly-colored Frozen Freezes. The Cap'n Crunch Delite, which was only available for a limited time, also got its 15 minutes of fame. "We think the brand is a social experience, so it lends itself to social media," Marisa Thalberg, Taco Bell's CMO, told Business Insider.” (Taylor)

I love Taco Bell because I know exactly what I'm getting every time I go: cheap, clever food items that taste great and fill me up without pretending to be a craft or artisan items. Taco Bell is an innovative, popular, crowdpleasing destination that has popularized Mexican food in a way no other restaurant has, and is accessible and fun without being confused about what it wants to be or who it wants to reach. There's a certain humility to the place that captivates me just as much as a great double-decker with mild sauce does, and this has evidently been the effect on billions of other customers as well. They've weathered PR storms, bad press, and much more, and continue to remain the ultimate late-night destination for midnight munchies. In fact, I'm getting a little hungry right now.

Want to go for a quick spin to pick up my favorite items: a Double-decker supreme, a Nachos Bell Grande, a steak soft taco, and a large Mountain Dew Baja Blast (by the way, what other fast food restaurant owns an entire drink to themselves?) to wash it all down?

Works Cited

“Yum Brands CEO on Taco Bell's Success: 'There's No Silver Bullet'.” Skift Table, 8 Feb. 2019, table.skift.com/2019/02/07/yum-ceo-on-taco-bells-success-theres-no-silver-bullet/

“Inside Taco Bell's Innovation Lab.” QSR Magazine, www.qsrmagazine.com/menuinnovations/inside-taco-bell-s-innovation-lab.

Matthews, Dylan. “Taco Bell Is Removing Some Vegetarian Menu Items. Here's Why You Shouldn't Panic.” Vox, Vox, 23 July 2020, www.vox.com/futureperfect/2020/7/23/21334234/taco-bell-removed-menu-items-getting-rid-vegetarian-vegan

Taylor, Kate. “Instagram Powers Taco Bell's Innovation Machine - and It's Completely Changing the Fast-Food Menu as We Know It.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 16 Apr. 2017, www.businessinsider.com/instagram-powers-taco-bells-innovation-2017-4...