Investors and fast-casual watchers alike can’t decide whether they love or loathe Chipotle’s bold decision last week to hire Brian Niccol, the chief executive of Taco Bell, to lead the troubled chain, which still can’t shake its reputation, fair or not, for serving tainted burritos. Or having rats fall from the ceiling at a Dallas store.
Some applauded the company’s pick, saying Niccol was the right person to make Chipotle relevant and innovative again. But Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” couldn’t wrap his mind around the culture clash of a quick-serve CEO suddenly running a fast-casual chain built on fresh, high-quality ingredients.
“This is a staggering pick,” Cramer said last week. “It’s everything they don’t stand for. It’s like naming a guy from the Army to run the Air Force.”
Niccol is considered a maverick who helped reverse the fortunes of Taco Bell, a once-moribund brand that recently blew by Burger King to become the fourth-largest restaurant chain in the United States, according to one report. Niccol achieved this remarkable turnaround by focusing obsessively on millennials: The chain, for example, successfully petitioned for a taco emoji, then developed an emoji engine to encourage taco-related imagery on your favorite social network.
What’s more, the chain partnered with Lyft to help get late-night drunks to a Taco Bell drive-through with the push of a button. It has also promised to start selling alcohol at more than 300 cantina-style restaurants in big-city markets. If that’s not enough, the chain has aggressively, and playfully, marketed itself via Twitter, TV commercials and its own web series, Taco Tales.
It’s no wonder Fast Company magazine named it one of the world’s most innovative companies in 2017?
But one of the chain’s largest lures has been its menu innovations, starting with the popular Doritos Locos Tacos, a snack that packed standard Taco Bell fillings into a hard shell shellacked to taste like Doritos. The product was introduced in 2012, and two years later, Taco Bell was selling about 1 million Doritos Locos Tacos a day. Since then, the chain has become an incubator for all kinds of hybrid dishes.
Among the more recent menu innovations: the waffle taco and biscuit taco (both part of Taco Bell’s campaign to take a bite out of McDonald’s dominance of the breakfast market), the Quesarito (which, in a bizarre twist of fate, was apparently an idea swiped from Chipotle’s secret menu) and, most recently, Nacho Fries. The latter product was pitched, via a clever marketing campaign, as a threat to Big Fries.
But here’s the thing: Clever marketing may attract customers, but only the food will make them return. I recently stopped by a Taco Bell in Takoma Park, Md., where the music over the sound system was definitely not aimed at millennials. Unless millennials like the Carpenters and Dave Mason.
I wanted to try some of Taco Bell’s famous hybrid dishes, the fast-food equivalents of the Cronut, the cruffin and the sushi burrito. Here’s what I found:
The Mexican Pizza: Introduced back in the late 1980s, before culinary mash-ups became objects of worship, the “pizza” is basically a Burrito Supreme in tostada form.
The Quesarito : The flour tortilla is so neatly folded, I can’t help but suspect this burrito-quesadilla hybrid was spit out in a factory. But it was prepared in the back by human hands, not cold steely machines. Regardless, the tortilla log tastes largely of . . . tortilla.
Nacho Fries: Yes, french fries at Taco Bell. This hybrid pairs seasoned fries with a spicy nacho dipping sauce. It’s underwhelming, in large part because the marketing hype suggests something more original.
