Taco Bell Adds Boozy Vegas Flagship in Bid to Energize Brand

PC: New Las Vegas Taco Bell flagship restaurant. Source: Yum! Brands

• Location on the Strip is meant to showcase chain to tourists
• Yum focusing more on Taco Bell following Chinese spinoff

(Craig Giammona, Bloomberg) Yum! Brands Inc., now more reliant on its Taco Bell chain to fuel growth, is opening a booze-serving flagship restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip to help invigorate the Mexican-food brand.

The new location will offer a retail shop, bar menu and all-night operating hours — the first time a Taco Bell has tried that combination. Yum also is updating the Taco Bell logo for the first time in decades, part of a plan to add 2,000 Taco Bells globally by 2022 and become a $15 billion business.

Yum, which also owns KFC and Pizza Hut, is focusing more on Taco Bell after the spinoff last month of its Chinese operations, which had generated about half the company’s revenue. With just a fraction of its restaurants abroad, Taco Bell remains primarily a U.S. business and will now account for about a third of Yum’s operating profit. Click here to continue reading