Taco Bell Wants To Wake You Up In The Morning

Yum! Brands, parent company of Taco Bell (as well as Pizza Hut and KFC), knows what it wants and isn't afraid to go get it. At this week's investor day, Taco Bell CEO Mark King spoke about the company's upcoming business strategies, and it sounds like we're going to see Taco Bell making a real push to increase sales during two of our favorite meals: breakfast and lunch. McDonald's, consider yourselves warned.

Business Insider notes that King told investors "There's a big opportunity" for both breakfast and lunch to grow at Taco Bell. If the recent battle for fast food breakfast dominance wasn't already abundantly clear, this is one more indication that breakfast is where where many chains are focusing their attention, not to mention their R&D budgets.

With office workers continuing to return to their workplaces, the opportunity is there for Taco Bell to establish itself as a primary grab-and-go breakfast option. Most commuters are looking for filling handheld items, like Taco Bell's Breakfast Crunchwrap, McDonald's McMuffins, and Wendy's Breakfast Baconators.

But Taco Bell suffered a setback when it decided to pause breakfast service due to the pandemic. The breakfast menu eventually resurfaced in 2021, but there's a lot of lost ground to be made up. With a renewed focus on breakfast, I'm really hoping we'll get some exciting limited-time items, even if Pete Davidson made fun of Taco Bell's over-the-top innovations in a questionable Taco Bell ad that emphasized comfort and familiarity over novelty. If anyone can put a fresh spin on breakfast, it would certainly be Taco Bell.

It's hard to imagine a future in which McDonald's isn't the first chain to come to mind when thinking about grabbing a fast food breakfast. But if Taco Bell plays its cards right, we might soon be swapping out McGriddles for toasted breakfast burritos and quesadillas. 

Lunch will be just as much a priority for Taco Bell as breakfast in 2023, and in order to establish itself as a lunch destination, the chain might make its beloved Nacho Fries a permanent menu item.

"We're looking at bringing fries permanently to the menu," King told investors on Tuesday. We've been waiting for a decision like this to be handed down from above.

Not only do Nacho Fries have the potential to get customers through the door, but they also make for an exciting burrito filling option, since you can customize a burrito with the addition of the fries whenever they're available. Yet another way we can let our imaginations run wild at Taco Bell.