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This is a Crunchwrap Supreme.

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It wasn’t too hard for my writer, Ben, to
get his hands on one—he just walked down

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the block, selected it on a touch screen,
realized that Taco Bell also serves liquor,

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started day drinking, forgot why he was filming
or where he lived, and then sat down in the

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street and ate it, all in the span of about
15 minutes.

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But as simple and convenient as the Crunchwrap
might seem, its development was anything but—it

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took 13 years and some shockingly precise
science to develop, but as far as Taco Bell

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menu items go, it’s really no exception;
like most multinational fast food chains,

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every item on the Taco Bell menu is a carefully-engineered
piece of technology.

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It takes psychologists, engineers, marketers,
and professional taste-testers to get something

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like the Crunchwrap right, and today, we’re
gonna talk about how they do it.

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For Taco Bell, much of that process happens
here: their Innovation Kitchen in Irvine,

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California.

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The kitchen is staffed by 12 chef scientists,
plus an additional team of engineers and quality-assurance

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specialists, all of whom are working around
the clock to make beans more exciting.

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Their tireless efforts produce about 8 to
10 new Taco Bell menu items per year, but

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those are selected from a group of 70 or so
items that make it to testing, and those,

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in turn, are selected from a group of 4,000
to 5,000 fleshed-out concepts.

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So, let’s start there, at the very beginning
of the design process: how does a divine human

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being, a child of God, bring themselves to
conceptualize Mexican Pizza?

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Well, it might seem like they’re just throwing
darts at the hedonistic dart board, but the

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psychology behind Taco Bell’s menu is actually
shockingly rigid.

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In order to make it past this first phase,
an idea must—to a certain degree—fulfill

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three criteria.

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The first is relevance: this is meant both
in the sense that it’s culturally relevant

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and discussion-worthy, but also functionally
relevant; each menu item has something that

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Taco Bell calls Category-Use Occasions, which
are basically the specific set of circumstances

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that a person would be in where that menu
item would be the solution.

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So, just to use the Crunchwrap as an example,
it’s designed, unlike a normal taco or tostada,

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to be eaten with one hand: a circumstance
you would find yourself in if you were driving,

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or were already eating a Crunchwrap with your
other hand.

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The second bullet point is ease: there should
be as little friction as possible in getting

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the item out the door, both for the consumer
and the manufacturer.

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Something as simple as adding too much cilantro
to a menu item for a chain as big as Taco

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Bell means running the risk of draining the
supply chain of cilantro, and then people

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won’t have access to the hot new Mountain
Dew Cilantro Blast.

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The Crunchwrap is essentially just a repackaging
of often-used Taco Bell ingredients, so it

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was never going to be scarce or hard to access.

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And the last criteria is distinctiveness:
the item has to stand out in people’s minds,

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but it can’t stand out too much—Taco Bell’s
chief design principle is that you can change

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the taste or the form of a traditional food,
but not both.

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The Crunchwrap, naturally, is an innovation
in form, but not in taste.

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Of course, most items don’t make it past
this first phase, and even if they do, they

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usually require dozens of iterations—this
is what the innovation kitchen’s Sensory

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Panel is for.

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Taco Bell trains an elite group of professional
tasters who help dial in specific parameters;

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the ideal bite force for a chip, for example,
is four pounds per square inch.

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To get the best possible mouthfeel from a
taco, exactly half of its calories should

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be from fat.

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And in the case of the Doritos Locos Taco,
the first handful of its 40 different iterations

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struggled to get out of this phase because
of their structural integrity: a chip should

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break, but a shell should not, and the original
triangular design of the DLT shell made it

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too easy to break—we told Ben to test this,
but he burned the shell the first time, and

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then the shell burned him the second time,
so our other writer Amy came over and made

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him one, and sure enough, yeah, it breaks
pretty easily.

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Now, once a concept makes it out of the innovation
kitchen, that doesn’t mean it gets a coveted

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spot on the Taco Bell menu—first, it’ll
be rolled out for a limited time in one of

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Taco Bell’s test markets.

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Taco Bell has tested items in—among other
cities—Sacramento, Irvine, Milwaukee, Dayton,

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Knoxville, Birmingham, and Minneapolis.

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Choosing a city usually depends on the sorts
of demographics they want data from; the Doritos

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Locos Taco was first rolled out not in a major
city like New York or LA, but in Toledo, Ohio.

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Of course the big city sickos would be all
over something like that, but it remained

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to be seen whether the blue-collar manufacturing
demographic of a city like Toledo was ready

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to truly Live Mas.

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Most products end up failing to pass this
hurdle, which is why you see such short-lived

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lives for things like the French Toast Chalupa,
the Cheetos Burrito, and the Croissant Taco.

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We didn’t ask him to, but Ben heard the
phrase “croissant taco” and immediately

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put it to the test, and cannot believe that
Ohio ruined this for the rest of us.

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And that brings us back to the Crunchwrap
Supreme—only after years of carefully calibrating

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ingredient distribution to a neat 6.25 ounces,
diagramming the perfect 6-inch hexagonal fold,

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innovating a heat-sealing solution to stop
it from popping open, and testing it in a

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limited capacity in 2005 did the Crunchwrap
earn a permanent spot in the Taco Bell roster.

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So the next time you thank science for penicillin,
clean water, or the nuclear bomb, throw in

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a good word for the Crunchwrap, too.

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So, living in the future has its ups and downs;
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