Think Outside the Bun

Despite the likes of Fast Food Nation, Supersize Me, and health advocates everywhere speaking about the overall unhealthiness and negative that fast food has on people, I have grown quite fond of the fast food industry over the years. I along with millions of others of Americans have especially become quite fond of Taco Bell.

This is particularly startling in part for two main reasons:
1) There is at least an 80% chance that Taco Bell leads to either a trip to the restroom or an upset stomach within 15 minutes of consumption.
2) Every one of their food items is a combination of the following items: taco shell, pita, tortilla, meat (beef, chicken or steak), shredded cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, beans, sour cream, and guacamole.

How Taco Bell manages to overcome the first reason is simple, their food tastes good and the utility gained from the first 15 minutes of consumption outweighs the post consumption discomfort. The way Taco Bell manages to overcome the second reason is a bit trickier. People are fickle and always want something new. Taco Bell has found a way to address this problem. I believe it is best served to look at the product line history of Taco Bell to best examine Taco Bell's marketing genius.

It all started with the basic taco with the standard hard taco shell, meat, lettuce and cheese:

They then realized that hey we can put the same meat, lettuce and cheese in a tortilla and call it a soft taco:

Then they realized hey, guess what we can roll up this soft taco into a stick and call it a burrito. The beauty of repackaging:

Oh wait! Maybe if we just fold the soft tortilla in half and melt the cheese inside, we can tell people it's actually different. Let's call it a quesadilla:

Somebody must have been smart enough to realize that if you take that same quesadila and roll it up into a stick, you can call it a Grilled Chicken Taquito and the public won't even know what hit them. That's "thinking outside the bun"

When the public started clamoring for more alternatives to the standard hard taco, soft taco and burrito, they decided that they can put a hard taco inside of a soft taco and create a new food item all together. Low and behold we have a Cheesy Gordita Crunch:

Not yet satisfied, the great minds at Taco Bell had to once again find alternative means to package the same ingredients into each and every one of its products. Some higher up at Taco Bell must have thought, "Hey everybody loves pizza, let's make a pizza and call it Mexican. That'll be a hit." So by placing two hard tacos on top of each other, the Mexican pizza was born:

And just when you thought Taco Bell could not possibly come up with any more concoctions for their ingredients and all signs pointed towards exhaustion of all potential marketing gimmicks, Taco Bell comes up with something so genius that we all must just nod our heads in amazement. I mean who would have thought, "Maybe if we put all our ingredients and make it in the shape of a pentagon, people will love it." Well Taco Bell thought that, and we should be thankful because we now have the six-sided delight we call the Crunch Wrap Supreme:

The next logical step is an eight sided all in one invention. Might I suggest naming it the "Stop Sign"? You never know though, Taco Bell might throw us a curve ball and skip the logical progression and jump right to dodecahedron shaped food.

What will they think of next?

PS: This is always good for a cheap laugh:


That is all

-ydollar