Taco Bell

Gorditas

What began as a Texas Taco more than four years ago burst onto the quick-serve scene last spring as Gorditas, a product launch that boosted Taco Bell earnings and earned it the 1999 MenuMasters Award for Best Menu Promotion.

"There was a lot of discussion back then about revolutionizing the taco," says Mary Wagner, the chain's vice president of corporate technology and quality. "We love tacos but said, 'If we really look at them differently, what would they be?' "

They would be -- and are -- Gorditas, featuring grilled chicken or seasoned meat topped with tomatoes, corn, black beans, cilantro and chipotle-mayo sauce, on warm flatbread.

Gorditas were launched in 1998 and backed by a $60 million ad campaign, that included the distinctive Taco Bell chihuahua shouting "Viva Gorditas!" in a widely aired television spot. The product's strong showing helped the chain end the year with quarterly same-store sales up 9 percent.

"This is a move by Taco Bell to get away from dependence on value pricing," says Randy Hiatt, president of the restaurant consulting firm Fessel International. "With Gorditas, they're creating higher pricing and higher margins besides their 39- and 59-cent items."

In Hiatt's view the Gorditas launch has worked exceptionally well with help from the big promotional push. "But if they had great advertising and Gorditas weren't accepted, Taco Bell wouldn't be showing the results they're having."

More than a one-time product offering, Gorditas gives Taco Bell a platform for future development.

"The flatbread is really the new platform," Wagner explains. "From that great, fluffy bread we can do lots of different things. For example, it lets us introduce a variety of new flavors like the Santa Fe with its corn-pepper salsa and Southwest-style chipotle-mayo sauce."

It also enabled Taco Bell to introduce chicken and steak as upsell items available with three different toppings.

Already the Gorditas have spun off a new product -- the Baja Gordita topped with Pepper Jack sauce and freshly prepared salsa in a choice of beef, chicken and steak.

"They've been focused on tortillas for years," Hiatt observes. "Gorditas gives them a premium wrapper that you can put virtually anything in. It's kind of unlimited."

Before Taco Bell, Wagner was on the retail side, including 12 years with General Mills, where she worked for Betty Crocker.

"Working in product development in quick service means faster results," she says. "We can go out to our five pilot stores and test an idea within a few days. In retail it would often take weeks to prove out something."

The technology and quality department at Taco Bell includes a staff of more than 50 food scientists, culinary experts, engineers and quality assurance personnel. Many were involved with the Gorditas project back when it was still a Texas Taco.

"This launch was a good example of total focus by our company. The testing process was lengthy with enough time between stages to do some great learning and apply that to the next stage," she adds.

The only major hitch in the Gorditas launch came when the product took off nationally, and Taco Bell had only one flatbread supplier. The chain had to bring several other vendors up to speed within three months. "That meant tweaking the process or tweaking someone else's process, yet still producing the same flatbreads. We can look back and chuckle now, but there was no laughing then," Wagner says.

While Gorditas introduced Taco Bell's 4,900 units to flatbread, they also led to some out-of-box menu items for the company, such as the cilantro-corn salsa.