Accidental Hedonist

…or stupidity, I can’t decide which.

Taco Bell set up shop in Mexico

The fast-food chain, which in 2006 achieved the No. 6 ranking among the top 100 U.S. chain restaurants by promoting its menu to Americans as authentic Mexico, is doing an about-face south of the border.

In its first store in Monterrey, which opened last month, Taco Bell is advertising itself as quintessentially “American,” with a menu that offers french fries and soft-serve ice cream.

And the Americanized taco – the crunchy, meat-filled corn shell sold in San Diego and other U.S. cities as a Taco Bell taco – has been renamed a “tacostada” in Mexico. It’s a made-up word that is a play on tostada, which for Mexicans is a hard, fried disk of cornmeal always served flat, with toppings.

Oh there is so much irony to enjoy in this article, but the “tacostada” is the clear winner.

And who knew that they marketed themselves here in the U.S. as authentic? With Mexican immigration reaching areas as far away as Maine and Seattle, does anyone really believe that Taco Bell is authentic? Or is Yum brands that delusional?

Word on the street (well, not the street, but rather USA Today), has it that Taco Bell has pulled green onions from all of their U.S. locations.

What was once a regional issue has now gone national.

Technorati Tags: Taco Bell, Onions, E.Coli

It’s probably not a great idea to eat at Taco Bell in the Long Island/new Jersey area. Meanwhile, Taco Bell executives will re-open any closed locations later today, having the stores “thoroughly cleaned and all food replaced”. This, even though no one knows what caused the outbreak, including the fact that it may not be the individual restaurants at fault but the food distributors that supply the sites. Unless the distributors have thoroughly cleaned their sites and replaced all the food there’s still the chance that the tainted food is still in the pipeline.

But if you’re hankering for chicken burritos, buying poultry at the supermarket seems like a bad idea as well.

*sigh*

Technorati Tags: E.Coli, Taco Bell, Chicken

Starting on January 1, customers that visit Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s or A&W Restaurants can obtain a free, four-week membership from Bally Total Fitness by simply presenting a proof-of-purchase receipt (for any amount) at one of Bally’s more than 400 nationwide facilities. The offer is valid through January 31, 2005.

The reason this is getting a lot of news is the incongruity of a fitness company doing business with the proprieters of unhealthy eating, fast food companies. It’s akin to Phillip Morris giving coupons to the local cancer clinic.

Personally, I’m not sure what to think about this. Anything that gets people out of the house and into some sort of activity is a good thing, even if the health club is the mega-coporation that is Bally’s (and just to remind you, Bally’s is hardly a stand-up corporate citizen, with a fair amount of their profits coming from gambling institutions).

But we are talking about fast food companies, who rarely have people’s health in mind. I mean c’mon, nobody think Long John Silver’s is cooking up anything healthy when 90% of their product line is deep-fried. That’s their nature. For them to go “Well, yeah, I guess we’re kinda unhealthy…perhaps we should do something about it” is an admission of sorts just how unhealthy their foods are.

Regardless, I would be interested to see who benefits more from this agreement. My guess? The fast food places get a short term gain, while Bally’s gets a long term benefit by signing up people for memberships that a percentage of the customers will never use.