Taco Bell makes it hard to keep up with its menu. The chain sort of endlessly tinkers with its offerings, bringing things back, trying new items, and shifting what makes up its various meal deals.
The Yum! Brands (YUM) chain can do this because its core menu allows it to easily tweak its offerings. A taco, quesadilla, burritos, and its innovations like Crunchwraps and Mexican Pizza (which is coming back) all use a lot of the same ingredients, Even when Taco Bell brings back its Nacho Fries it can endlessly adapt them by adding new toppings or throwing some meat and cheese on them.
This allows the chain to have its menu feel endlessly new without having a complicated kitchen to operate. If it adds a new sauce like its "White Hot Ranch" sauce, it can use that to make a variety of new items.
Are any of them that different? No, they most certainly aren't, but a bacon cheeseburger isn't that different from a cheeseburger, even if it's emphatically better. The same might be said for some new breakfast offerings (and a new morning deal) the chain has been testing.
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Taco Bell Adds to Its Breakfast Menu
Taco Bell launched its current breakfast program in March 2014. It was (and is) a mix of Mexican takes on traditional American breakfast, Cinnabon Delights, a mini take on the classic Cinnabon. Think breakfast burritos, and a variety of wraps filled with eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and cheese in varying combinations.
It's a Taco Bell twist on breakfast. It's not inherently that different than what McDonald's (MCD) or Wendy's (WEN) offers, but it uses tortillas as the key "bun" rather than biscuits, English muffins, or bagels.
The Mexican chain has also offered bundled meals in the morning with $5 Bell Breakfast box. That's similar to its afternoon promotions, like its Cravings Meal which are, like Wendy's 4 for $4 and its $5 Biggie Big, are really just variants on McDonald's Combo meals.
Now, Taco Bell has a new take on its $5 Bell Breakfast Box with more choices including two items that are not currently on the menu.
Taco Bell Adds to the $5 Breakfast Box
Currently, the Taco Bell $5 Breakfast Box only has one choice for the main entree -- the Grande Toasted Breakfast Burrito. Customers can pick between a bacon, sausage, or steak Grande Toasted Breakfast Burrito, but that's the only choice.
Now, the chain has been testing new options, according to a report from Brand Eating.
Taco Bell is now testing "a new version of the Bell Breakfast Box for a limited time at select locations in the Nashville, TN area that offers a choice from three different entrees: the Breakfast Crunchwrap, Breakfast Quesadilla, and Breakfast Flatbread Melt."
Neither the Breakfast Quesadilla nor the Breakfast Flatbread Melt currently appears on the chain's menu.
"The Breakfast Quesadilla offers a choice of bacon or sausage with scrambled eggs and a melted 3-cheese blend folded in a warm flour tortilla," according to Brand Eating. "The Breakfast Flatbread Melt includes a choice of bacon or sausage mixed with scrambled eggs and a 3-cheese blend, served on a fluffy flatbread."
The $5 Bell Breakfast Box also includes a medium fountain drink (to meet all your morning soda needs), hash browns, and a two-pack of Cinnabon Delights. (You can substitute coffee for the fountain drink if you want to be less extreme during breakfast hours).
This test comes at a time when Wendy's actually cut back the number of choices in its 4 for $4, pushing those choices to its $5 Biggie Bag. Taco Bell may have an advantage over its rivals in that it can offer more choices because most of the ingredients of the various options are more or less the same.
