Dive Summary:
- On the eve of Taco Bell's 50th birthday in 2009, CEO Greg Creed made the fast food chain's biggest innovation in decades, reinventing the crunchy taco with the Doritos Locos Taco.
- Using the way burger chains and Subway are constantly coming up with new breads as an example, Creed's team was given until March 2012 to rethink Mexican cuisine and an idea from Frito-Lay stuck out above the rest.
- The initial development team demonstrations in April 2009 involved spraying Doritos flavoring on the existing shells and extended all the way up through creating a shell that delivered the "teeth-rattling crunch" Frito-Lay desired, and the company has now sold over 450 million of the original Doritos Locos Taco with more flavors planned.
From the article:
... Steve Gomez, Taco Bell's food innovation expert, recalls seeing the first mock-up. "Every day I see a lot of concepts--sketches on paper, written words about products--and my job is to turn those products into reality," he says. "But in all my years as a product developer, I've never seen a concept like this. The product didn't even exist yet, and already people knew this idea was going to be huge." ...