This podcast is five years old today! Backers, you get a special bonus episode on the Patreon site in addition to this one.
It’s almost like a two for one fast food deal!
Speaking of fast food, today in 1962 the opening of the very first Taco Bell.
The fast food chain is a global phenomenon today, but in the early days there weren’t a lot of people who were convinced that a place that focused on tacos and burritos could go national, let alone international.
That’s why one of the items on the early Taco Bell menu was a burger.
Taco Bell started with entrepreneur Glen Bell.
He’d previously run several other restaurants in San Bernadino, California.
These were burger and hot dog places, but one of the ways Bell set his restaurants apart was by selling hard-shell tacos.
In the 1950s he was part of a group that ran taco-centered establishments in southern California.
The first Taco Bell restaurant opened in Downey, California, and all five items on the original Taco Bell menu cost 19 cents.
You could order a taco, a burrito, a tostada, frijoles, and the chili burger.
It was kind of like a sloppy joe, with crumbly ground beef instead of a patty.
It also came with onions, lettuce and mild taco sauce; you could add tomatoes and sour cream.
The idea was that people who weren’t yet sold on tacos and burritos might come by and try a Mexican-flavored hamburger, and then maybe they’d try the other foods too.
The chili burger was on the menu when the chain got its first franchisee, two years after launch.
Three years later it had a hundred locations.
The menu began to expand in the 70s, and the chili burger got a new name: the Bell Burger.
In the 1980s, Taco Bell rebranded the burger again as the Bell Beefer.
But by the 1990s, this original menu item stopped, um, beefing.
At that point, Mexican food was a huge part of the American restaurant scene, so maybe the company decided it didn’t really need a gateway burger to introduce people to the flavors and seasonings.
Or maybe it just wasn’t a big seller, and they wanted to make room for other foods.
The reason wasn’t clear, but one thing is still clear today: there are Bell Beefer diehards who want the burger back on the menu at long last.
And while Taco Bell hasn’t shown any sign that this is going to happen, these fans’ enthusiasm for the item once known as the chili burger certainly hasn’t crumbled.
San Francisco is home to the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents.
It’s home to a wide range of perfumes and fragrances, brewed up from the recipes found in antique books.
Do they have the aroma of the Bell Beefer, though?
Was the ‘Bell Beefer’ Burger Among Taco Bell’s First Offerings? (Snopes)
This San Francisco Bay Area museum stinks (Boing Boing)
Our Patreon get an exclusive bonus episode today – it’s like a 2 for 1 deal at a fast food place!