Taco Bell

Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell on March 21, 1962, in Downey, California. He was not new to the food business, having run a hot dog stand and a hamburger joint called Bell's Hamburgers. The idea for a taco stand came after he noticed customers lining up at the Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, a small Mexican restaurant that served hard-shell tacos. Bell adapted the recipe, built a walk-up stand in 1951 selling tacos for 19 cents, and spent the next decade perfecting the formula before launching the chain that would bear his name.

By 1964 the first franchise opened in Torrance, California, and the brand spread rapidly across the American Southwest. PepsiCo acquired Taco Bell in 1978, and when PepsiCo spun off its restaurant division in 1997, the chain became part of Tricon Global Restaurants, later renamed Yum! Brands in 2002. Today Yum! also owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and The Habit Burger Grill. Taco Bell operates more than 8,200 restaurants in over thirty countries, with franchisees running roughly 93 percent of them. The global headquarters sits in Irvine, California.

Taco Bell's menu centers on Mexican-inspired fast food: tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, and specialty items like the Crunchwrap Supreme, introduced in 2005, and the Doritos Locos Tacos, which launched in 2012 and sold more than a billion units in its first year. The chain is known for its Cravings Value Menu, late-night hours, and limited-time offerings such as the Naked Chicken Chalupa (2017) and the Bacon Club Chalupa (2024). It also sells packaged grocery products including taco shells, sauces, and seasoning mixes. System-wide sales reached roughly $14 billion in 2023, a 9 percent increase from the prior year, and Taco Bell contributes more than 40 percent of Yum! Brands' operating profit.

The brand adopted the Live Más motto in 2012 and cultivates an irreverent, youthful tone through social media campaigns and partnerships with figures like Doja Cat, BTS, and LeBron James. Its signature purple, yellow, and red color scheme and the bell-shaped logo are widely recognized. Taco Bell has faced controversies, including a 2011 class-action lawsuit that alleged its seasoned beef contained only 35 percent beef. The company responded with a full-page newspaper ad headlined Thank you for suing us, defending its recipe, and later settled the case. Fan protests over discontinued items, such as the Mexican Pizza, have also drawn attention; the item returned to menus in 2022 after a petition gathered tens of thousands of signatures.[edit]