When it comes to Mexican food in the fast-food
arena, there is one king, Taco Bell, based out of Irvine, California. The history of this late night spot could
actually be one of the more interesting background stories of any fast food giant. So let's delve into the top 10 untold truths
of Taco Bell, the largest purveyor of tacos and burritos in the Western world! Taco Bell was Founded by Glen Bell Taco Bell's logo is and has been some variation
of a bell and because of that and it's near omnipresence in every city, suburb, exurb
or truck stop, the name itself basically lost meaning like when we talk about Target (despite
its logo being a Target) or perhaps more ironically, K-Mart (what's that K mean? The Thousands of Dollars it loses a minute?). The bell itself doesn't actually represent
some sort of delicious bell-shaped taco, but rather it's the last name of the man who founded
Taco Bell. Glen Bell, like many fast food founders, started
in the hot dog stand game. His first was a hot-dog stand/drive-in in
San Bernardino, California a couple years after the end of WWII when the population
and economy in the United States was quite literally booming. At only 25 years old he opened another restaurant
titled 'Bell's Hamburgers and Hot Dogs', in a long-story-short version of his biography
he got into the Mexican/Tex-Mex game a few years later in late 1951 or early 1952 when
he opened a taco stand under the name 'Taco-tia'. That evolved into 'El Taco' with a partner,
who bought him out, which led Bell to open the first Taco Bell in Downey, California. We’ve got a bell too - give it a tap, and
join our notification squad, and be sure to hit subscribe while you’re at it! Taco Bell was Owned by Pepsi Have you ever noticed that you can only get
Pepsi products at Taco Bell? That's not a coincidence or even a multi-million
dollar agreement like most fast food joints have with their pop provider. The reason why Taco Bell is all about Pepsi,
and especially Mountain Dew and all the exclusive flavors they come up with just for Taco Bell,
is that Pepsi actually OWNS Taco Bell. Back in 1978, owner Glen Bell sold Taco Bell
to PepsiCo. They stayed in their original headquarters
for almost 40-years, though, only moving to bigger and better digs in November of 2015,
moving their HQ from Downey, California to Irvine, California. In 1997 PepsiCo actually "spun off" it's fast-food
and created Tricon Global Restaurants. From there, in 2002, Tricon acquired another
fast food/restaurant company named Yorkshire and decided to rebrand itself as Yum! Brands. Since Pepsi is still technically the owner
of Yum!, Taco Bell locations still exclusively serve Pepsi products. The Tacos Originally Cost $0.19 and Confused
the Heck Out of People Perhaps unsurprisingly, people didn't really
know what to make of Mexican or Tex-Mex food back in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Keep in mind that this was also a time that
people were introduced to pizza, as some of the soldiers who fought for the good guys
during World War II ended up in Italy and discovered the deliciousness that was pizza
and brought it back to the States. Tacos didn't require any war to end up in
North America, but they were just as alien to a lot of people. The idea was so foreign that people didn't
even know how to pronounce "Taco", instead they pronounced it as "Tay-Kohs", something
that really doesn't make any sense as phonetically "Taco" makes a lot more sense than "Tay-Koh",
you know, because there's no 'Y' or 'H' in "Taco". Either way, people loved the "Tay-Kohs" and
bought them en masse, partly due to the fact that they only cost 19 cents a pop at Taco
Bell founder Glen Bell's first taco stand. The First Taco Bell Would Blow Your Mind The first Taco Bell finally opened in 1962,
after founder Glen Bell learned the ropes by owning a taco stand as well as multiple
Mexican restaurants (named 'El Taco'). The first Taco Bell looked nothing like the
Taco Bell's of today, in basically every way possible. For starters, the store was 400-square feet
(which is tiny compared to the average Taco Bell of today which is typically anywhere
between 1,800 and 2,200 square feet). The building was described as being "Mission-style",
which means it looked like a stereotypical Mexican building. The original location didn't have any indoor
seating or a drive-thru, instead, it only had a kitchen and an ordering window (with
the kitchen obviously taking up most of the 400 square feet). There was seating outdoors, though, which
was comprised of a few patio chairs and tables, and a fire pit. Bell would hire a mariachi band from time
to time - to really hammer home the fact that they were eating tacos, I guess. The Original Taco Bell Logo was Cray Cray If you ask anyone what the original logo for
Taco Bell was they'd probably point to the 80's to early 90's logo that basically just
had a yellow bell in front of an orange/yellow background with the words 'Taco Bell' beneath
it (and typically the words 'Drive Thru' beneath that). That was actually not the original logo, not
even close as it was actually the fourth version of the logo. The original logo is sort of hard to find
online, which makes you wonder what the people at Taco Bell are hiding. Luckily for everyone, there are descriptions
available as to what the logo looked like and it sounds... Just awful. The original logo was very colorful and also
lopsided. You can find part of it online, the part that
spells out "Taco Bell' with each letter having its own square and lopsided background. Above that, there was also a drawing of a
man sleeping under a giant sombrero while sitting on top of a bell. That logo was quickly replaced by PepsiCo
when they took over as they knew the number one rule for creating a logo is to make it
as simple as possible, or at least, not super busy. Having each letter turned a different way,
with different colors, and then also having a sleeping man under a sombrero (which is
a stereotype that’s pretty racist) who also happens to be on top of a bell, is clearly
too busy and is probably why they scrubbed it from the internet. 59-79-99 Changed the Fast Food Game If you were lucky enough to be alive in the
early 90's, or at least somewhat sentient, you might remember the promotion that Taco
Bell ran at the time as it was advertised on television, the radio and billboards like
crazy. That promotion was the 59-79-99 "value" promotion
and the numbers weren't the combination for the safe at Taco Bell's headquarters, but
rather was something that makes dollar menus look overpriced and greedy. Those numbers were a reference to the value
menu at Taco Bell with each number referencing a price point. That means that Taco Bell offered a super
wide range of options from tacos to nachos, cinnamon twists to more tacos at either 59
cents, 79 cents or 99 cents. Beginning in 1991, the campaign was not only
heavily advertised but it was also a gigantic success in that it increased same-store sales
at Taco Bell restaurants by 60 percent, which helped Taco Bell become the "top-performing
fast-food company in the Nation" at the time (according to Harvard Business Review). The promotion put a ton of pressure on Taco
Bell's competition and because of that, you could say that the 59-79-99 promotion basically
created the dollar menu at most burger chains. Not too shabby for what was once a "Tay-Koh"
stand. The 'Yo Quiero, Taco Bell' Dog Caused a $42
Million Dollar Lawsuit and No Uptick in Sales After the success of the 59-79-99 promotion,
sales began to stagnate at Taco Bell. Because of that they decided to come up with
a can't miss advertising concept and you'd think, if you were alive at the time, that
they hit a home run with their 'Yo Quiero, Taco Bell' commercials. Those commercials starred a Chihuahua named
Gidget, whose catchphrase was Spanish for "I want Taco Bell". Those ads became a cultural phenomenon and
you'd think that would translate into monster sales for Taco Bell as those ads, along with
their follow-ups (the less popular "Viva Gordita and "Drop the Chalupa" spots), seemed to be
everywhere. However, despite the fact that you couldn't
go anywhere without hearing someone with no personality of their own spouting "Yo Quiero
Taco Bell", those ads didn't translate into any uptick in sales. Taco Bell was then sued in 2003 by two advertising
agency executives who claimed that they came up with the concept for the ads. Taco Bell ended up settling that lawsuit,
which was filed in court and asked for $42 million dollars, which means that those ads
ended up most likely losing Taco Bell money. Gidget, however, ended up starring in a movie
(Legally Blonde 2 with Reese Witherspoon) and lived a full life until she passed away
at the age of 15. Taco Bell Colluded with the Russians Multiple cartoons have had a plot in which
a businessman or supervillain wants to put their logo on the moon in what would be the
best advertising of all-time. While Taco Bell hasn't gone that far, they
did actually work with Russia back in 2001, to take advantage of the fact that the Russian
space station, Mir, was going to be "brought down" after 15 years orbiting the earth. The problem with "bringing down" a space station
like that, as we recently found out with China's doomed space station, Tiangong-1, is that
it's hard to really control or figure out where that space station is actually going
to "land" (and by land we mean crash to earth at insane speeds). Taco Bell took advantage of this uncertainty
in what is admittedly an amazing promotion, a promotion in which they offered everyone
in America a free taco if the Mir space station ended up landing on a giant floating bullseye
that they placed in the South Pacific not too far off the coast of Australia. Now, the odds of the space station actually
hitting the target was worse than someone winning the Powerball while getting hit by
lightning, but the publicity that came from the promotion would've covered the cost for
the 250-million people that lived in the United States at the time. Of course, Mir didn't end up coming close
to the target, and Taco Bell didn’t have to dole out millions of free tacos. Mexicans vs. Mexican Food Taco Bell's parent company Yum! Brands is one of the largest fast food companies
in the world based on "system units", as it has over 45,000 restaurants around the world. While not all of those locations are Taco
Bells, a lot of them are and they are based all over the world, bringing "Mexican" food
to people in places like the Middle East, Asia, Iceland, and Russia. If you've ever been to Mexico or eaten at
a traditional Mexican restaurant this won't come as any surprise but the one market that
Taco Bell has had the most problem cracking is actually Mexico. Yum! opened their first location in Mexico
back in 1992 in Mexico City, which is one of the biggest cities in the world and would,
you'd think, literally eat up what Taco Bell had to offer. However, that location closed in under two
years thanks to poor sales and it took a full decade-and-a-half for them to try again in
Mexico, opening a location in Monterrey in 2007. That restaurant didn't fare much better and
again, it really isn't that much of a surprise as Taco Bell is at best "Tex-Mex", which is
just another way of saying that it's Americanized Mexican food. Mexican tacos, for example, are mostly meat,
cilantro, and onions. Things like tomatoes, cheese, and especially
sour cream are considered "American style" tacos. So, bringing Taco Bell to Mexico would be
like a Mexican restaurant opening a Hamburger franchise in the United States that puts celery
on its burgers. The Taco Bell Dorito's Loco Taco Required
A LOT of Hard Work and Engineering One of the most popular items that Taco Bell
has ever introduced is the Dorito's Loco Taco, a concoction that substitutes the typical
taco shell with one that is made solely of Doritos chips. You'd think that it'd be easy to convert Doritos,
which are chips, into a taco shell, however, Doritos chips are actually a lot different
than taco shells in terms of how they're made and how structurally sound they are. Because of that Taco Bell had a hard time
actually making this idea work. It took over two years and over 40 different
recipes for them to perfect the science behind the Dorito's Loco Taco shell, a struggle that
was summed up by Steve Gomez, a "food innovation expert" at Taco Bell. He said that they had a team of engineers
working "day and night" to get just the seasoning right, let alone somehow converting a typical
shell into one that looked and tasted like the most iconic chips in the game. The hard work paid off as Taco Bell has reportedly
sold more than half a BILLION Dorito's Locos Tacos since they debuted back in 2012. Yum! Indeed. The recipe for following us is easy - just
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