Want to know why Taco Bell has been the best-performing major fast-food chain over the past couple of years? Just check out its latest marketing effort.
On Thursday, the Irvine, California-based chain revealed its “Decades Y2K” menu, which will do several things at once: It provides quality value, brings back long-demanded menu items, taps into consumer nostalgia and provides an innovative dose of technology. There’s also a merchandise collaboration and an event in L.A. featuring Lil Jon. Oh, and a lot of it provides incentives and rewards to its loyalty members.
The menu, which the company had teased earlier this year, will bring back several items, notably the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos, along with a Caramel Apple Empanada, 7-Layer Burrito, Double Decker Taco and Chili Cheese Burrito. Members of the chain’s Taco Bell Rewards loyalty program will get an early taste of the empanada next week. The entire menu will return on Sept. 9.
All those items will be priced at $3 or less, which enables Taco Bell to both address consumer concerns about value while giving them items they have demanded. It also taps into consumer nostalgia for the early 2000s.
In addition, Taco Bell is pricing a Discovery Luxe Box at $9 with the Crunchwrap Supreme, a Cool Ranch taco and other items.
Taco Bell is also revealing “Crunchkin,” a “taco-pet” companion within the chain’s mobile app that consumers care and feed. The pet grows and evolves as consumers play and make purchases. At the end of the game, users who fully evolve their Crunchkin can enter a sweepstakes to win limited-edition Taco Bell merchandise.
Taco Bell's merch collaboration with Ed Hardy features a digital watch.
There is also a partnership with throwback merchandise retailer Ed Hardy, targeted at loyalty members. Customers will have opportunities to buy a digital watch and vintage-style shirts Tuesdays from Sept. 2 through Sept. 16.
Because it’s Taco Bell, there is also a party. A select number of loyalty members were able to score tickets to a Y2K party tonight in Los Angeles featuring the rapper Lil Jon, who first came to fame in the early 2000s.
“No one did the 2000s like Taco Bell,” Taylor Montgomery, chief marketing officer for Taco Bell, said in a statement. “That era gave us some of our most iconic items, including the Crunchwrap Supreme, which remains one of our best-sellers two decades later.”
But all this just shows why Taco Bell remains at the top of its game despite a market that is otherwise brutal for fast-food chains.
Among limited-service chains in the second quarter, only Dutch Bros reported better same-store sales than Taco Bell’s 4%. The chain has had one negative quarter of same-store sales since 2016, with that one period coming during the pandemic-addled second quarter of 2020.
The chain’s menu enables an almost endless source of opportunities for new items. It can also provide a number of low-priced options that give it an almost untouchable reputation for value. It has also become a top-flight marketing engine. An impressive group of executives at one point led marketing for the chain, including current Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol and former Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed.
Taco Bell’s “Decades” menu is only the latest example of the chain’s capabilities.
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