Taco Bell once viewed cheese and sour cream as a garnish on its food.
Today, it realizes that dairy enhances the entire eating experience.
by Hoard’s Dairyman staff
HOARD’S DAIRYMAN
D
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MI opened our eyes to dairy,”
stated Taco Bell’s Heather Mottershaw. “DMI just brought such
a different level of knowledge to
us. Our focus is now cheese.”
Mottershaw should know as a product specialist who has been with the Taco Bell brand,
which is part of the larger YUM! Brands Inc.
restaurants, for 13 years. In her current role,
Mottershaw serves as Taco Bell’s senior director of innovation and quality assurance on its
Food and Beverage Innovation Team.
The YUM! Brands Inc. family includes Taco
Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut. The latter, Pizza Hut,
was highlighted on page 608 of the October 10,
2016, issue in, “It’s Super Cheese for the Super
Bowl.” Like its sister brand Pizza Hut, Taco
Bell has developed a partnership with Dairy
Management Inc. (DMI) and the national
dairy checkoff. The only difference is that
Taco Bell’s relationship is a bit older with the
good partnership interactions later sprouting
the seeds of interaction at Pizza Hut.
“When we traditionally looked at the supply
base for dairy, we had really seen it as a commodity,” reflected Mottershaw. “We looked at cheese
in the food as a garnish and viewed cheese as a
commodity ingredient coming into our facilities.
“We had a complete 180-degree turn on the
situation,” Mottershaw went on to say.
“What do Taco Bell customers crave?” she
asked rhetorically about the 50 million people
who frequent its stores each week.
“It’s about fast, affordable, tasty, and creative. When you look at the role of cheese and
what cheese can bring to the menu, cheese can
October 25, 2016
brilliantly deliver on taste and the eating experience as well,” said Mottershaw. “DMI really
helped us open our minds to that and in the
process opened a whole new platform to us.”
“We frequently use focus groups to evaluate
new products,” noted Steven Gomez, manager
of Taco Bell’s Food and Beverage Innovation
Team. “When we started to move cheese from
garnish to center stage, consumer panels would
totally get passionate about cheese,” stated the
10-year Taco Bell veteran. “Words like ‘ooey
gooey,’ ‘cheese pull,’ and ‘melted cheese’ routinely were being used by consumers to describe
our potential new product offerings. Quite
frankly, these words were new to us and did
not even appear on the initial product descriptions. That’s what really began to shift our focus
to cheese. We found consumers really loved
cheese,” said Gomez of the restaurant chain
with nearly 7,000 U.S. restaurants and 300
additional international locations.
A long time coming
“When I started at Taco Bell 10 years ago,
there was this idea of the cheese-stuffed taco,”
stated Gomez. “It always caught my attention.
However, nearly everyone we talked to thought
it was too challenging to commercialize. That
repeatedly put the idea on the back burner.
Yet, the concept kept staring at me. ‘I hope we
can crack the code on this idea one day,’ I kept
saying to myself because it could be the next
big item,” said the product specialist whose
chain boasts $8.7 billion in annual food sales.
“We finally got to the place were we had a
few prototypes,” said Gomez. “That begged the
question, ‘Can we commercialize it through
supplier partnerships and DMI?’
“The DMI partnership allowed us to place a
dedicated resource on the Quesalupa project,”
said Gomez, noting the trade name of what
became the cheese-fused taco. To bring the
product to life, Taco Bell had to make a machine
to take tortilla taco shells and fuse them
together with a dash of cheese placed between
the two shells.
Cheese marries the shells
“The Quesalupa shell is really two tortillas
fused together with the cheese placed in the
middle in what we call a ‘secret pocket,’” said
Mottershaw. “What we had to figure out was
how to fuse the tortilla shells together and
ensure those shells would stay together. That
is where the expertise of DMI dairy scientist
Lisa McClintock came into play, along with
expertise from a supply partner,” said Mottershaw, who works for the nation’s sixth-largest
Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) chain. “In
fact, Lisa spent four months on the road to
bring this product to the marketplace.”
“Lisa would continually visit our suppliers to
ensure the Quesalupa’s tortilla shell made it
to the marketplace,” added Gomez. “By having
that dedicated person, we were able to develop
this product on a much faster pace.”
“Now that we created the Quesalupa, the ideas
are limitless because you can stuff all kinds of
different cheeses in that pocket,” said Mottershaw. “It’s just limitless. We are super excited
about this as a platform moving forward.”
While the journey to develop the Quesalupa
Began with breakfast
The DMI-Taco Bell partnership actually got
its kick-start with breakfast. These days, 90
percent of Taco Bell’s breakfast items feature
dairy products.
“We tried to launch breakfast about four or
five times before we got it right,” recalled Mottershaw. “What we realized, people want American
breakfast flavors in the morning. We now deliver
those flavors with our unique Taco Bell twist.
“The Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap is our
heavy hitter on the breakfast menu,” said
Mottershaw, explaining the restaurant chain
launched the breakfast menu 18 months ago.
“Cheese plays an important role in the Bacon
Breakfast Crunchwrap. We actually learned
that after the launch.
“We have an ounce of Cheddar cheese on
the Crunchwrap. However, we didn’t melt it at
first. We simply grilled it,” said Mottershaw.
“Eventually from consumer focus groups,
we learned that melted cheese is really
important in the morning,” said Mottershaw
of the restaurant chain dating back to 1962.
Mike Ciresi
DMI
Dairy Scientist
“OOEY GOOEY” HAS BEEN just one of the many passionate words customers use when describing Taco
Bell’s recent product introductions. In fact, cheese is
now Product Hero and customers now clamor about
attributes such as “melted cheese” and “cheese pull.”
The recently introduced Quesalupa, Cheesy Core Burrito and Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap, shown above
left to right, each showcase cheese.
“That caused us to go back and redevelop the
Crunchwrap, and we now melt our cheese in
the morning. Customers preferred the melted
cheese much better than the initial version
launched. By melting the cheese, we can
deliver a yummy experience.
“Overall, breakfast has gone really well for
us,” said Mottershaw. “It’s opened a completely
new part of the day,” she said, reconfirming
Taco Bell restaurants now open earlier each
day. “The Bacon Breakfast Crunchwrap is the
cornerstone of the breakfast menu. That being
the case, cheese plays a huge role in breakfast.”
Cheese as the core
“The Cheesy Core Burrito is Mike’s baby,”
explained Gomez when talking about a product
introduction predating the Quesalupa. “Mike
really expanded on this idea. We have this
DMI dairy scientist here and he really exploded
on ideas on how to bring this product to life,”
added Mottershaw. “Mike built this product
around cheese and dairy. The combination
takes the product to a whole new level.”
“After a great deal of ideation, we created the
Crunchy Cheesy Core Burrito and the Spicy
Cheesy Core Burrito,” stated Gomez. “If you cut
this product in half, it has a ring with a tortilla
in the center with the x-factor — either cheese
plus crunch or cheese plus spice. So every bite
has warm melted cheese and the x-factor.”
Steven Gomez
Taco Bell
Innovation Team
Lisa McClintock
DMI
Dairy Scientist
Used by permission from the October 25, 2016, issue of Hoard’s Dairyman.
Copyright 2016 by W.D. Hoard & Sons Company, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
Cheese wasn’t always the focus, however.
“We really knew we had an idea when we
went to focus groups,” added Ciresi. “We
tested five or six versions and overwhelmingly
it had to be cheese. ‘Cheese. Cheese. Cheese,’
responded the focus groups.”
“That’s a good point,” added Gomez. “We
had put other items in the core, but test panels always valued cheese.”
Part of the family
As for their collective seven-year tenure as
dairy scientists at the Southern Californiabased company, “Taco Bell treats us just like
employees,” said Ciresi. “We have face time
with Taco Bell leadership.”
“Because we are part of the Taco Bell team,
it’s not awkward that we are talking about
dairy or milk. Our ideas are just as valid as
everyone else’s ideas,” added McClintock.
The difference?
“We are constantly referencing our ideas
back to dairy farmers,” said McClintock.
The Dairy Food Maker Series
September 10: McDonald’s
September 25: Domino’s
October 10: Pizza Hut
October 25: Taco Bell
Heather Mottershaw
Taco Bell
Innovation Team
October 25, 2016
HOARD’S DAIRYMAN
may seem straightforward for the product
launched during the 2016 Super Bowl, recall
Gomez’s earlier statement: “Nearly everyone
we talked to thought it was too challenging to
commercialize.” That was the situation because
the equipment needed to make the product
didn’t exist and making the cheese-stuffed tortilla shell was still mainly a manual process.
“To meet demand, we have multiple plants
across the country to make this product,” said
Lisa McClintock, a full-time dairy scientist
consultant to Taco Bell. “As the Quesalupa
continued through the development process,
I was going into these plants to make sure
everything was working properly, including
the tortilla shells fusing together with cheese,”
said McClintock, noting the team had to create
an 11-week inventory prior to the launch for
Taco Bell’s nearly 7,000 U.S. restaurants.
“There are a lot of nuances. That includes getting the cheese centered so that it distributes
properly between the tortilla shells. Remember,
this product is all about the cheese pull,” said
the four-year DMI-Taco Bell staffer. “If you don’t
have the right amount of cheese or the cheese
placed properly, you don’t get that cheese pull.”
How does the Quesalupa compare to Taco
Bell’s original Crunchy Taco?
“The Quesalupa has five times the amount of
cheese as the Crunchy Taco,” explained Mike
Ciresi, a three-year on-site dairy scientist with
Taco Bell. “The Quesalupa is dairy friendly, full
of cheese and reduced fat sour cream.”
As for the product’s reception in the marketplace? It’s a hit. The Quesalupa has been
well received by customers, and it just won
top honors at the Prepared Foods 13th annual
“Spirit of Innovation Awards.” Taco Bell and its
vendor-partner Tyson Foods won the category,
“Most Disruptive/Interesting New Product.”
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