“ Research has shown there’s this implicit bias that people view healthy food as less tasty, and that unhealthy products are tasty,” Lawrence says. Do you already see the problem here for a brand like Taco Bell? The other thing is, how are customers supposed to reconcile foods evoking freshness and health that share a menu alongside shit like a beefy crunch burrito or nacho fries? They just can’t. One reason is the psychology behind this: People perceive quality items to cost more, and so in order to market a premium ingredient, it should be more expensive. The ingredients are different and often more expensive. Like that old Cantina Bell menu ? Yes, usually. “Beans and rice and those types of things are relatively cheap.” Those “healthier” things they offer, though, those are made of different ingredients, right? “ Taco Bell isn’t unique in, they’re lucky in the sense to have some core ingredients that lead to a very efficient food cost,” Lawrence says. We’re not even talking about a half-decent burger patty. It’s certainly not caviar or wagyu steak. So Taco Bell’s menu prices are so reliable because those core ingredients are so cheap?Ĭorrect. Lawrence says they’re high on the excitement scale of innovative products, while at the same time, they’re not expensive. They embrace wacky, ridiculous new products all the time. Taco Bell has leveraged this ability into their marketing, too. You can take the same set of ingredients, and by adding one more (say, a “ taco shell ” made out of breaded chicken ) you change the presentation, the texture, you make it spicy, or whatever else. But Taco Bell’s cuisine and ingredients are very malleable. And a hamburger, at the end of the day, is just a hamburger. He points out that you can change the shape of pizza or put cheese in the crust or whatever, sure. That’s just putting their stuff in a different shell, and it’s hard for me to think of another brand that is able to do that.” “The Doritos Loco Taco has been one of the most amazing brand launches ever,” Lawrence says. The difference with Taco Bell is that they can just change one little variable - say, a taco shell caked with MSG-laden Doritos dust - and they’ve got a hot new anus-burning product, if not practically a whole new category. Yeah, but what’s this have to do with Taco Bell? Lawrence says Subway is in a different type of situation, where they’re so stuck to certain price points - don’t even start with that $5 footlong earworm, dammit - that its Sandwich Artists have to try to upsell you every two seconds on just about everything: avocado, cookies, salad, pizza, etc.
KFC added different breading and types of chicken, becoming ever more complex. But over time, as they tried to attract a larger market share and they added salads, burritos and whatnot, it made them less efficient to run. Once upon a time, it had a very simple menu: burgers and fries, really. What’s so unique about Taco Bell?Įver noticed how menus keep expanding, much like Morgan Spurlock’s gut in Super Size Me ? Take McDonald’s, for example.
“That’s why restaurants that operate well tend to create items out of the fewest possible ingredients because it reduces waste, it improves efficiency in the kitchen and you don’t have to carry as many items.” Taco Bell, though, does this better than most. “Fundamental to any type of food service outlet, the fewer items you have, the more efficient you are,” Lawrence says. So how do they make this work? And what are the underlying economics behind it? Alongside Benjamin Lawrence, the Aziz Hashim Professor of Franchising at Georgia State University, we’re figuring out how Taco Bell leverages ground beef, beans, lettuce, cheese and tomato into endless permutations of cheap, charmingly disreputable, quasi-Mexican cuisine. Have you ever noticed that no matter what you order from Taco Bell ’s vast menu, whatever’s inside that shell or tortilla is basically the same stuff that’s in most every other menu item? It’s genius, isn’t it? The perception of variety, but with (mostly) the exact same goddamn ingredients! The Onion pointed this out way back at the end of the 20th century, and yet, still no one seems to mind, as the chain remains a fast-food behemoth amid so much change in the restaurant industry, in large part thanks to those reliably modest Taco Bell menu prices.
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