Taco Bell operations

[Brian Lutz]

Where a lot of other big fast food places have expanded and streamlined their drive-thrus over the past decade or so, for some reason Taco Bell doesn't seem to be able to move past the "one speaker, one window" model. Given the volume some of these locations do in the drive thru lines (especially late night on weekends), it makes for a rather inefficient experience for the customer, but I suppose it does allow the kitchen to keep things linear in the kitchen. There are a few locations I've seen with two windows, but they rarely if ever use the first one.

I suspect that the reason for this in a lot of locations is that they just don't have the space for much else. For some reason a lot of Taco Bells have smaller real estate footprints than other fast food restaurants, and just wouldn't have space for a second drive through order board. It also seems a lot of locations are still operating out of the old late 80s and 90s era buildings. And unlike McDonald's which has aggressively demolished and replaced those older buildings, Taco Bell seems to be content to just keep remodeling them over and over. It is rare to see a Taco Bell completely torn down and rebuilt, but it does happen (the Totem Lake location in Kirkland is one where they replaced one of these 90s style Taco Bells with a much smaller building with limited indoor seating, but inexplicably kept the one-speaker-one-window drive thru from the older store.

[cjd]

Most of the Taco Bell’s around here relocated to new buildings over the last 5-6 years. The old buildings usually become home to smaller operations like Dunkin, though the one here is now a Sonic with indoor and drive in service.

But all of the new locations are as you have observed, still the single speaker/single window. With as short staffed as they often are, I don’t think a double drive thru would speed things up much here.

[Alpha8472]

Taco Bell in the San Francisco Bay Area has relocated some old Taco Bell locations to newly built buildings in the past 6 years. There were two Mission style Taco Bell locations that did not have drive thru windows. These were in San Leandro and Martinez, California. I believe the old locations converted to sit down independent Mexican restaurants.

There is still one tiny non-drive thru Mission Taco Bell in Lafayette, California.

There were many 80s and 90s style locations that have remodeled in the past 5 years. However, they were not expanded and kept the old single speaker and window set up.

There are 2 local Taco Bell restaurants with a person standing at the drive thru taking orders on a tablet computer. This helps the line, but there is still just 1 ordering person and 1 window.

[cjd]

Well last week I had thought possibly Taco Bell might actually be open for breakfast but wasn’t sure.

This time I realized they were definitely open as I saw a car in the drive thru order successfully and multiple cars outside.

I was the only customer inside, did see a few cars in the drive thru and a few orders taken out for curbside pickup.

I ordered the Breakfast Box with sausage, egg and hash brown Crunchwrap, hash brown, two Cinnabon Delights and drink for $5.49.

I was impressed, everything was fresh and crispy, I suspect everything for it is made to order as it took quite a while to get the order.

I think for the price is was ample, though it does show as Limited Time only.

Also, Taco Bell is getting much better about making sure you get your cup even if ordering on the kiosk. I have not had to ask lately at all.

It is surprising to me that Taco Bell is appearing to offer breakfast and lunch at the same time, and they do run breakfast from 8-11. I guess they have finally overcome the staffing issues to start opening before 11.

[storewanderer]

There is big pressure from corporate to build breakfast sales. They have been running radio ads lately, a lot, in my area, specifically for breakfast.

My view is since COVID, fast food breakfast sales have nosedived. McDonalds is especially less busy at breakfast. Wendys has the best breakfast food by far of any of these chains, yet very few customers going even when they have really good promotions running. Statistics seem to say otherwise though.

In theory Taco Bell should be able to do all day breakfast or at least a few items all day. But it may not work. They don't typically cook to order. Del Taco tried all day breakfast in my area about 6-7 years ago as a test market. Before that breakfast at Del Taco was 11 PM to 11 AM (even if the store closed at midnight it served breakfast its last hour). Before that Del Taco cooked egg to order if you ordered any egg product (they also cook to order burgers). The test market didn't work and they went back to breakfast hours.