Taco Bell vs. Chipotle
Fast Mexican (or Tex-Mex) food is a really hot market — and Chipotle Mexican Grill is slowly catching up to Taco Bell, the biggest Mexican-based fast food chain in the US. Last year Taco Bell's system-wide sales were flat year-on-year, Chipotle grew 7%.
Taco subscriptions
So it's interesting that this week Taco Bell announced its latest innovation to re-invigorate growth: the Taco Lover's Pass subscription, which gives you one taco a day for a whole month for $10.
The idea is that you might stop by Taco Bell for your free taco, and decide that actually you were hungry and thirsty after all, and end up adding to your order.
Taco Bell isn't the first restaurant to experiment with subscriptions. Panera has one for drinks, and Sweetgreen just launched a loyalty subscription for its salads.
So far the jury's out on whether these subscriptions actually work, or if they're more of a short-term gimmick, but Taco Bell did say that its test of the subscription in Arizona grew its rewards program by 20%. Tracking streaming subscriptions is already hard enough, so we're kind of hoping for our sake that this doesn't work out.
