Taco Bell to Launch New Concepts at Live Más Event in Hollywood
A Taco Bell Cantina in Las Vegas
Photo by Steven Keys/KeysPhotography.com
Taco Bell, created by Glen Bell as a walk-up stand in Downey in 1962, has been growing and evolving in ways that are stranger and stranger in recent years. From a new Live Más café in San Diego where “Bellristas” mix up coffee concoctions to a full-on art deco cantina concept in Hollywood where slush machines can add rum or tequila to your frozen drink. They've recently brought back long-gone menu items from the '60s, '70s, and '80s after customers clamored to savor the Mexi-melt once again.
Earlier this year, the company hosted a pop-up celebration in Las Vegas with rappers and DJs to announce their new menu items. Their inaugural Live Más Live party was compared to an Apple launch event and the 2025 edition is going to be held in Los Angeles on January 28.
Live Más Live 2025 will showcase not only new food items (possibly including breakfast?) but also new technologies, partnerships, and merch. They promise live entertainment and prizes and are promoting an early ticket drop to members of their Taco Bell Fire! Club. Can new takes on the MTN DEW® Baja Blast® Freeze really sell out 4000 spots at the Hollywood Palladium? “We spent a lot of time with the fans, and they want more from us,” Chief Food Innovation Officer Liz Matthews told Nation's Restaurant News.
In the futuristic 1993 sci-fi movie Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone stars as a cryogenically frozen cop brought back in the year 2032. He is treated to dinner at a fine dining restaurant complete with valet parking, a piano bar, and even Otho from Beetlejuice sipping a drink at the bar. “You do not realize that Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars,” Sandra Bullock tells him as they pull up to the glamorous spot. “So, now all restaurants are Taco Bell.”
