At last, consumers got a taste. But after all the concept drawings and testing, trips to Home Depot, and prototype development, initial consumer taste tests flopped, to the disappointment of the team. “They completely called us out,” Perdue says. Gomez recalls feeling crushed. “It was total buzzkill in the room,” he says.advertisement
After Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch, a spicy Doritos Flamas-flavored taco is next on the docket. But that’s not all the company has in the works. “Someone said to me, ‘Well, when you launch three or four of these things you’ll run out of ideas,” Creed says. “I’m like, ‘Not really.”
All in, the teams experimented with more than 40 recipes over two years. During that time, the teams faced several roadblocks. “Remember, a taco shell has to bend, so we had to make this crispy [like a chip], but we also had to make it be able to bend so it didn’t crack,” Creed says. “This was a really big engineering challenge, [especially considering] we would have to make hundreds of millions of these shells.”
“When you buy a bag of Doritos and you open it, and some of the corners are broken off, you’re probably not going to be that mad, because they’re still Doritos,” Gomez says. “But if our taco shells are broken in transit or in the restaurants, we can’t do anything with them. That was a big obstacle for us. How do we make these shells chip-like, but also be able to ship them and still be able to build a taco without having them break? There were some [prototypes] where we would barely even touch them and the shell would break.”advertisement
By September 2011, Taco Bell had rolled out the DLT prototype at a handful of restaurants in a few cities around the country for testing. Soon, hype around the DLT spread like lukewarm baja sauce. Customers began blogging about their experience; a slew of video reviews hit YouTube; and one Taco Bell addict even drove 900 miles from New York to Toledo, OH for an early taste of the DLT. “They were just fanatical, and the results were off the charts,” Stephanie Perdue says. “I’ve never seen so much word of mouth generated for one single product.”advertisement
“When the idea for the Doritos Locos Tacos came out of a collaborative ideation with Frito-Lay, we immediately saw the potential,” Gomez told Business Insider.
Customers also wanted to get cheese dust on their fingers after they ate a Doritos Locos Taco, because that was the experience they got when eating the chips.
“When we shared the idea with our consumers, they loved it,” Gomez said. “I was blown away with how immediately popular Doritos Locos Tacos became.”
Gomez earned his masters degree in Food Science from Rutgers University. He cut his teeth at the Pepsi brand, developing Sierra Mist and Gatorade products.
Keep reading Newsletter Sign up for our newsletter to receive our top stories based on your reading preferences — delivered daily to your inbox. Loading Something is loading. Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our
We know what you’re thinking: that meeting took place in 2009, but the Doritos Locos Tacos we all know and love weren’t introduced for another three years. What gives? Innovation takes time. Doritos, as we know them, don’t make great taco shells it turns out. Who knew! Taco Bell’s R&D department spent two years developing prototype after prototype of the Doritos Locos shell (40 total), which sounds both exhausting and potentially delicious. Not unlike Goldilocks, the good people at Taco Bell tried and tried until they finally settled on the shell that was just the right balance of crunch, seasoning, and finger-staining flavor.
As with all great inventions, the Doritos Locos Tacos, or DLT as it came to be known, was not without contention. Taco Bell visitors loved it, and the company was surely raking in the dough as a result, but in 2014 a group of scorned ex-Taco Bell advertising interns rose up. They alleged they invented the Doritos Locos Tacos back in 1995 (remember the unnamed suggestor?) and they had CVS-length receipts to prove it, including pictures of original mockups. But they weren’t the only ones who alleged they’d had the idea first. I mean, who among us hasn’t concocted something crazy in the kitchen late at night only to one day see it on the Taco Bell menu?
Taco Bell carried on slinging its unique culinary creations to some success, but in 2009 CEO Greg Creed started stressing about keeping things fresh. Anyone can sell tacos and burritos, he thought (probably, we weren’t there!), so he tasked his team with bringing new life to an otherwise boring yet classic menu item: the hard shell taco. That same year in a brainstorming session yet another brilliant mind suggests T-Bell consider throwing Doritos into the mix by collaborating with sister-brand Frito-Lay to create a Doritos taco shell. This time, the idea gets the green light!
The Doritos Locos Taco first hit the Taco Bell menu in 2012. That’s more than 50 years after Glen Bell founded what would become a staple in the fast food industry and 52 years after the Dorito was invented. The world almost got a taste of the Doritos Locos Taco sooner, when a genius unnamed employee/hero among men pitched the idea to Taco Bell’s then-Vice President of Marketing to no avail. Big mistake, pal.
Much like McDonalds McNuggets, Taco Bells Doritos Locos Taco is a bonafide fast food icon. It’s so popular that it’s hard to imagine a world where the taco-junk food hybrid wasn’t on the menu, although it’s a relatively new offering. The bright side of its popularity? You’ll probably never have to live in a world without it ever again. At least we hope not.
FAQ
How old are Doritos Locos Tacos?
What happened to Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos?
With an upcoming menu revamp, Taco Bell will be discontinuing quite a few menu items including the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco and Double Decker Taco. The new menu changes (which also includes a new look and color scheme for the menu board) start on September 12, 2019.
Who came up with Doritos tacos?
