The Spicy, Gassy History of Taco Bell: A Weird Food Journey

 If you've ever been drunk at 3 am, then chances are you've been to Taco Bell. Since 1962, the franchise has been serving up Mexican-American cuisine at prices that have totally changed the way Americans think about fast food.  

Now, you might assume that the name Taco Bell is a reference to the Bell that appears in the company's logo, but you would be wrong. The titular Bell is actually a reference to the company's founder, Glenn Bell, who named the place after himself. Inspired by the cuisine at the Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, California, Bell started tinkering with a recipe for crunchy tacos as early as 1951. While he is sometimes credited with inventing the pre-formed crunchy taco shells that are so ubiquitous today, he actually got the idea from Mitla founder Donier Lucia Rodriguez. Right around this time, Bell opened Belle's Drive-In and Belle's hot dogs and hamburgers in the San Bernardino area. The chili dog sauce he developed for these businesses would later become Taco Bell's famous taco sauce. That's using every part of the chili dog.

To distinguish his restaurants from the competition, particularly McDonald's, Bell began to experiment with his offerings a little and added tacos to his menu. McDonald's does not sell tacos, primarily because one can never trust a taco made by a clown. The tacos were a hit, leading Bell to become a partner in two different Taco chains, Taco Tia and El Taco. In 1962, using money he made selling his stake in the El Taco chain, Glenn opened the first Taco Bell at 7112 Firestone Boulevard in Downey, California. By 1967, the chain had grown to over a hundred locations. Three years after that, Taco Bell had more than tripled to 325 restaurants. Hangovers would never be the same again.

Today, Taco Bell is owned by Yum Brands, the same corporation which owns Pizza Hut and KFC, which is why you sometimes see these franchises smashed together in the same building, like some kind of tasty food mutant. But between Yum Brands and Glenn Bell, Taco Bell had another owner: Pepsi. Yes, in 1978, Koch's number one competitor bought Taco Bell from its founder for 125 million dollars. That may sound like a bargain, but when adjusted for inflation, that amount goes up to over a half billion dollars. Someone at Pepsi really had a thing for the seven-layer burrito.

During the 1960s, Pepsi had noticed that Taco Bell was making tacos popular among the American public. By 1970, the company wanted to wet its carbonated beak in the trend and bought an Oklahoma-based restaurant called Taco Boy, which they quickly rebranded as Taco Kid for some reason. Evidently, they wanted to be clear they sold more than just men's tacos. Pepsi hoped the restaurant could grow into a competitor for Taco Bell, but in case you haven't noticed the distinct lack of Taco Kid locations in the mall food court, things didn't work out for the kid. So Pepsi decided to just buy Taco Bell instead, and in 1978, they did. In 1997, they spun their fast food division off into a separate company called Tricon Global Restaurants, which sounds like a place where robots go to get Chinese food. So in 2002, Tricon became Yum Brands.

For as long as there has been Taco Bell, there have been rumors that the meat in their products was not meat, or only 36 percent beef, or grade D beef, which isn't really even a thing. So what's the Straight Dope? Well, while Taco Bell meat does arrive at the restaurant pre-cooked, it's otherwise pretty unremarkable. Taco Bell meat is 88% beef, and the other 12% is mostly common fillers derived from oats. The meat is also blended with an additive known as soy lecithin, which acts to keep the ingredients in their beef from separating. But the ingredients themselves aren't anything you wouldn't find in the meat at any other fast food restaurant, or whatever that's worth to you.

Whether it's a crunchy taco with beef or a chicken chalupa, Taco Bell serves plenty of meat. But the Bell is a favorite spot of vegetarians as well. To start with, Taco Bell customers can substitute beans, rice, or potatoes for any of the meat products in any of the menu items. This means almost anything on the menu can effectively be rendered vegan. Even the guacamole can be switched out for the sour cream, you know, if you're a psychopath. In 2019, the corporation made a public commitment to making their menu even more friendly to vegetarians and vegans, which is saying something because there are already a zillion potential vegetarian combinations on the menu. The menu has a dedicated veggie craving section on it, and the Taco Bell website features a guide to eating vegan at the franchise that was prepared in cooperation with the American Vegetarian Association. Although if you're looking for a healthy diet, Taco Bell probably shouldn't be saved in your GPS.

In 1979, McDonald's produced a Happy Meal promoting Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But it wasn't until 1989 when Taco Bell joined in the promotional campaign for Tim Burton's Batman that the fast food business truly realized how lucrative such a tie-in could be. That summer, Taco Bell locations were decorated with cardboard cutouts of Michael Keaton's Dark Knight. Meanwhile, customers who ordered a large streak received a Batman's collector's cup with images of the Caped Crusader on one side and the Batmobile, Batwing, a bio of Batman, or the skyline of Gotham City on the other. The effort was so successful it smashed Taco Bell's records for promotional tie-ins. One location even claimed their sales increased by 25% during the course of the promotion, and another location reported that sales of large drinks nearly doubled. Customers also took to stealing the cardboard cutouts of Batman, a crime worthy of the world's greatest detective.

Batman may have been a big success, but not every Taco Bell campaign can make the same claim. For example, in 1996, the company decided to lean into the fun of April Fool's Day by announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell from the city of Philadelphia. And if you know anything about Americans, you know they take their national monuments very seriously. Many folks were fooled by the gag, and not in a good way. The National Park Service was bombarded with angry phone calls complaining about the sale of an important historic object to a fast food chain. Taco Bell was forced to bail on the joke after just a few hours and announced the whole thing was just a prank.

Then there was the time in 2001 that the Mir space station was brought out of orbit so it could return to Earth's atmosphere. Scientists anticipated the parts of the station would burn on re-entry, while the rest would fall into the Pacific Ocean. For some reason, Taco Bell decided this was an irresistible promotional opportunity and constructed a giant Target in the South Pacific just off the coast of Australia. The company then announced that if any pieces of the space station hit the 40 by 40 foot Target, Taco Bell would give every American a free Taco. Of course, since the Pacific Ocean is nearly 64 million square miles, no space station chunks landed anywhere close to the Target, leaving a whole lot of Taco Bell-loving Americans disappointed.

While we're on the topic of failed promotions, if you watched television during the 1990s, then you probably remember the Taco Bell Chihuahua. That spunky little dog appeared in a series of ads on a dramatic search for spicy treats, uttering the memorable catchphrase. At one point, everyone from Canada to Mexico was quoting the ads. So how could that promotion have been a failure? Well, that ad campaign cost half a billion dollars. The money was well spent in the sense that everyone knew the commercials and their star, Gidget the Chihuahua. But as an investment, it was wasted. Despite the campaign's popularity, it didn't boost the franchise's sales at all. Not only that, but two men who claimed to have created the Taco Bell Chihuahua later sued for 42 million dollars, and Taco Bell settled out of court.