Fast food chain Taco Bell has partnered with ride-sharing company lyft to cater to its largest demography of customers – the drunk or club hoppers. This initiative will initially be launched in Newport Beach location from 9 pm onwards till 2 am. Both the companies plan to do a trial run and then gradually broaden their horizon to Southern California. They plan to go nationwide by 2018 if the initial runs are successful.
What is Taco Mode?
The whole initiative is called Taco Mode where you can just press a button and your Lyft cabbie will drive you to the nearest drive-through so that you can grab a bite or lay your hands on your favorite Taco Bell food item.
The fast-food giant already has a tie up with Waze, which is a navigation app and allows them to offer delivery and advertise their location.
But this tie-up with lift is a different kind of “innovation experience” says Marisa Thalberg, the Chief Marketing Officer of Taco Bell. They have tried out the whole experience of delivering food to the customers and with this new innovation, they are getting the customers to the food. It is sort of an inverse delivery.
Generally, when someone hails a cab from a pub or a club, it seems to ask for a lot from a cabbie to drop by a drive-through and customers feel that it is inappropriate. Even the ride sharing companies have no policies regarding this for their drivers and hence there are a lot of important questions which are unanswered.
There are so many forums, which have these questions from the customers and the drivers as well.
What propelled the initiative?
Thalberg says that there were a string of funny tweets which triggered them to actually start thinking about and gradually to start working on an initiative like this. Taco Bell was going to be a part of UberEat delivery, but they pulled out of the deal in the last moment as they were skeptical about delivering cold food to their most valued customers.
Lyft has partnered with Starbucks and Delta, but this is the first time that they would be actually doing the whole process. Melissa Waters, the Head of Marketing of Lyft plans to introduce taco-themed vehicles and in-car menus for the customers. This tie-up with Taco Bell will give Lyft an upper-hand over their major competitors like Uber.
Taco Bell and Lyft have come under mutual understanding about this whole deal and they are trying to co-create a unique experience for both their customers. This deal goes way ahead than the traditional marketing efforts like television and newspaper commercials, billboards, etc.
The Taco Mode trials run will commence from July 27th to 29th and August 3rd to 5th and if it all falls in place, they plan to expand all across the US by 2018.
