Taco Bell Tortilla Shortage

[Alpha8472]

Taco Bell is experiencing a flour tortilla shortage. Their restaurants across the country are being forced to stop selling such popular items such as quesadillas, burritos, Crunchwraps. This is forcing people to order more expensive items such as the power menu bowl or the cheesy gordita crunch. Many of the value menu items are not available.

The nacho fries are available, but they always seem to be out of them or give an excuse such as they cannot fry foods late at night. Supposedly the oil has to cool down before they can clean and close the restaurant.

Chipotle is not having a shortage of tortillas at this time nor is Safeway.

[storewanderer]

Grocery stores in my area are full of flour tortillas. Prices are great just like always, product is fresh, being replenished, etc.

There must be some sort of supplier issue or change of suppliers. I wonder who their supplier is.

[rwsandiego]

Grocery stores in my area are full of flour tortillas. Prices are great just like always, product is fresh, being replenished, etc.

There must be some sort of supplier issue or change of suppliers. I wonder who their supplier is.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! You are right, according to this article in Food and Wine.!

[klkla]

This is really strange. Sounds like a huge fail on managements part. If none of their competitors having trouble getting tortillas why are they?

[Alpha8472]

Taco Bell is probably getting their tortillas from the cheapest possible supplier. I have aways found their ingredients to be of the cheapest and lowest quality. The chips taste awful and the company seems to want to cut costs on ingredient quality.

If Taco Bell wanted to, they could buy tortillas from a supermarket.

Instead, their employees are pushing more expensive menu items that no one ever wants to try. Do they want to become Chipotle? If I wanted to pay too much for a bowl of mixed ingredients, I would go to Chipotle.

[storewanderer]

This is really strange. Sounds like a huge fail on managements part. If none of their competitors having trouble getting tortillas why are they?

Massive fail for this type of chain. And how hard is it to go get tortillas from a store or secondary supplier? I am sure Taco Bell has some sort of proprietary recipe. But just get the measurements of the proprietary tortillas and make it work. I guess this also causes an issue for the nutrition information posted if they use alternate tortillas the nutrition information may not be quite accurate.

This reminds me of my first visit to a Ruby Tuesday years ago in Redding, CA (long out of business). This chain features (featured?) a salad bar. The location had no romaine lettuce. I was a little bit confused given there is a grocery store right across the street but I guess they have specific suppliers they have to use... even for something like that.

[jamcool]

It’s like McDonald’s running out of hamburger patties

[pseudo3d]

This is really strange. Sounds like a huge fail on managements part. If none of their competitors having trouble getting tortillas why are they?

Massive fail for this type of chain. And how hard is it to go get tortillas from a store or secondary supplier? I am sure Taco Bell has some sort of proprietary recipe. But just get the measurements of the proprietary tortillas and make it work. I guess this also causes an issue for the nutrition information posted if they use alternate tortillas the nutrition information may not be quite accurate.

This reminds me of my first visit to a Ruby Tuesday years ago in Redding, CA (long out of business). This chain features (featured?) a salad bar. The location had no romaine lettuce. I was a little bit confused given there is a grocery store right across the street but I guess they have specific suppliers they have to use... even for something like that.

It could be policy, one of my dad's favorite stories from the old H-E-B Pantry we used to have was how some cooks from a nearby Olive Garden in the parking lot wandered in to buy the powdered parmesan cheese from a can (think Kraft brand, but it was the store brand that came in a green, opaque can), presumably to use as a parmesan cheese substitute.

[Super S]

Well, if random Subway locations can run out of bread (I have encountered this several times) anything is possible. A chain fast food store could temporarily change to a local supplier and very few people would likely notice.

[pseudo3d]

Well, if random Subway locations can run out of bread (I have encountered this several times) anything is possible. A chain fast food store could temporarily change to a local supplier and very few people would likely notice.

But that actually makes a bit of sense. Subway bread comes in as frozen sticks and has to rise in the pans, and then be baked. Most other sandwich shop bakeries have either higher-quality (more expensive) bread that would cut into profits, or is not 12 inches (they have rulers, and there's still "less than 12 inches" cases from 2013 moving through courts). And of course, even if getting frozen sticks is possible, it still takes at least an hour for them to get ready, which would cut into service times.