Your prayers have been answered... Taco Bell will start doing breakfast

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Your prayers have been answered… Taco Bell will start doing breakfast

Taco Bell will soon be expanding its menu and its hours by finally diving into the breakfast market. Expect lots of breakfast burritos (mmm breakfast burritos), breakfast chalupas and wraps and all sorts of faux-Mexican taco breakfasty madness. MADNESS!

In the past five years, breakfast and snacks accounted for virtually all of the industry’s growth, according to research firm NPD Group.

“Right now, we’re not getting our fair share of that,” Niccol said. “We want to get our fair share and then some.”

The breakfast menu comes a year after Taco Bell was knocked on its heels by a short-lived lawsuit claiming that its seasoned beef filling did not have enough beef to be billed as such. Taco Bell denounced the claim as false and spent millions in advertising to defend its taco filling and shore up its image. The suit was dropped about three months after it was filed by an Alabama-based law firm.

But Taco Bell has struggled to regain momentum since the publicity generated by the suit. Taco Bell accounts for about 60% of U.S. profit for Yum, but revenue at Taco Bell restaurants in the U.S. open at least a year have fallen in each quarter since the suit was filed.

The breakfast rollout is in company-owned stores as well as restaurants owned by franchisees. Some Taco Bell restaurants in the West already are open around the clock, Niccol said. Other stores will open their doors and drive-thrus at least one hour earlier to serve breakfast. For most, that means an 8 or 9 a.m. opening, with breakfast ending at 11 a.m. local time. That’s later than the start time for most other fast-food chains offering breakfast.

It’s a reflection of Taco Bell’s core customers — the 18- to-20-something crowd that’s generally not up at the crack of dawn.

“What we found is, they’re not the customer that shows up at 6 a.m. for breakfast,” Niccol said. “We can get those guys on board, they become the evangelists, and then we can start adding additional hours for people that want breakfast at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.”

The rollout is taking place in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, and there are a limited number of participating stores in Texas, Ohio and Oklahoma.

Via