Name: How Taco Bell’s CEO Is Keeping Gen Z Obsessed
Uploaded: 2025-09-05T04:01:00Z
Duration: 9 min 8 s
Description: As the fast food industry struggles, Taco Bell is still seeing sales rise, thanks in part to Gen Z. WSJ spoke with CEO Sean Tresvant about how the brand keeps its base excited even as they pull back on spending.

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As the fast food industry struggles, Taco Bell is still seeing sales rise, thanks in part to Gen Z. WSJ spoke with CEO Sean Tresvant about how the brand keeps its base excited even as they pull back on spending. Photo Illustration: David Hall/Zuma Press

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250904/9783ef42-2b1c-4c07-a10f-95a6d5fb8f67/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

As the fast food industry struggles, Taco Bell is still seeing sales rise, thanks in part to Gen Z. WSJ spoke with CEO Sean Tresvant about how the brand keeps its base excited even as they pull back on spending.

How Taco Bell’s CEO Is Keeping Gen Z Obsessed

They are spending on brands they care about, and Taco Bell is a brand they care about.

Reporter: Fast food restaurants have been struggling. Sales have slowed over the last year as people pull back on spending, but Taco Bell has kept customers coming. Its recipe for success?

For us, it's how do we continue to really make the co love us?

Both: Taco Bell got some new items today, y'all!

Reporter: Here's how Taco Bell's CEO says they're feeding the obsession.

So, fast food is so competitive. It is a cutthroat industry. How are you succeeding in fast food right now?

We have this thing called the magic formula, and I've talked about the magic formula a lot, but it consists of four components. Being a buzzy brand and culture. We wanna be a value brand. You see that in our value platforms. We wanna be a great brand in digital. If you're not winning on this, you're not winning. And last, we wanna be innovative, and we have a history and DNA of innovation and we wanna continually bring new thing, exciting things to our consumers.

Taco Bell brought back Crispy Chicken Nuggets, and I can't believe how good they are.

So it might surprise people that you sold out on chicken nuggets. Is Taco Bell a chicken restaurant now?

The funny thing about chicken nuggets, I think even internally, we had people into the kitchen, some influencers, some people within the industry, and I think people kind of scratched their head a little bit, but it didn't surprise us. We knew that we had an amazing product. We knew we could storytell around that product. We knew some of the content that we created, are we a taco place or a chicken place, really resonated with consumers.

Announcer: From your taco place. It's also a chicken place that's also a taco place.

And so the result, while surprising to a lot of people wasn't surprising to us.

This is the Taco Bell back of house.

How have restaurants had to invest to accommodate more chicken?

We do have holding cabinets, things that keep the chicken longer, but if you just look at the back of house and how we invest in stuff like something that makes this more efficient, like preppy, which manages whole times. When you look at line printers, which is all about accuracy for us, when you look at voice AI, it's investing in the holistic total back of house, which, therefore, helps all of our proteins resonate with consumers.

What have you seen in trends or data that was like, "Ugh, we have to be in chicken now"?

What happened to us is you start to get insights about how consumers are accessing more crispy chicken, how chicken is leading as a protein. So for us, it wasn't a new thing. It's now, let's get in the kitchen, no pun intended, and look at different forms, different flavors, and how we can really leverage chicken on our menu for consumers.

Reporter: As other types of meat get more expensive, more and more restaurants are making the bet on chicken. In the last year, McDonald's, Chipotle, and Wendy's have launched chicken-focused campaigns. And sales for chicken chain restaurants have stayed high as burger chains have stalled.

Chicken's very competitive right now. You've got chicken players that are focused on it, and then fast food is all into chicken, McDonald's, et cetera. How do you stand out?

If you think about chicken nuggets, they weren't normal chicken nuggets like every other QSR had. It was chicken nuggets with a tortilla crusting. It was the sauces we provide, were very Mexican-forward. If you think about Jalapeno Honey, Bell Sauce, Jalapeno Ranch. So for us, for chicken, it's, one, we wanna be where the consumer is, and two, we wanna make sure we do it the Taco Bell way. ♪ The Gordita Crunch, all I do is munch ♪ ♪ On that good Taco Bell ♪

So how are you looking for trends?

We've been a brand that's been on the tip of culture. So we look at everything, both data, qualitative trends, quantitative trends, Gen Z trends, and we wanna make sure we're at the forefront of it all. If you look at what we think about, we think about sports, we think about music, and we think about food, and we stay pretty focused on those three things. We don't wanna be the brand that jumps around and chases after every trend.

I was gonna ask about your tenure at Nike, which is known for, you know, big drops and hype. Are there elements of that experience that you're bringing to Taco Bell?

Yeah, I'd say the most important thing I'm bringing is, you know, Nike's a product and a taco is a product. And what I wanna continue to bring to Taco Bell is just storytelling about that product. Consumers fall in love with stories and I think the more we storytell about the brand, whatever part of the brand it is, it's really important. ♪ Mexican Pizza, why did you leave us ♪

I also said when I came in that I'd always hear we wanna be the best in QSR. We have the best sales in QSR. We wanna be the best brand with QSR. We're now the best operations in QSR. And I said, "Why can't we just be the best brand?"

We're gonna keep this a secret, but the Bell doesn't deserve to be kept a secret.

How have you honed in on your customers?

When I came to Taco Bell, I think we were trying to sell to everyone and speak to everyone. I think it's important to sell to everyone, but the brands that break through speak to somebody specifically. Who we speak to is somebody we call the cultural rebel, somebody who is pushing trends forward, who is changing the game.

What age is the cultural rebel? Tell me more about the cultural rebel.

We'll call it Epicenter Gen Z. And when we think of Gen Z, we call it 18 to 30 Gen Z. That's who we're speaking to. So it's almost a subsegment of Gen Z. And it's a mindset. And we wanna make sure as we create food content, it really gives us a roadmap or a blueprint for what we create. So we're not just creating things, we're creating things that speak to that cultural rebel.

Announcer: This is Taco Bell's celebration of its fans. Behold, a bunch of randos, not famous people.

Wait, what?

Sorry, big guy.

Reporter: Taco Bell has competition in capturing this specific demographic. dcdx, a research firm that studies how Gen Z interacts with brands ranked Taco Bell as number five on the Magnetic 100, a measure of restaurant's power to reach Gen Z based on how much and how often it's talked about online.

Okay, guys, I am back and I got a Baja Blast.

How are we getting Gen Z to spend?

When you look at that group, they're the word of mouth brand ambassador, brand advocate, that will drive your brand forward. And if you look at that, they are spending on brands that they care about.

How do you get them to keep caring?

You keep caring by executing the magic formula. We wanna make sure that from our brand standpoint, from a digital standpoint, from a value standpoint, and from an innovation standpoint, we keep on executing the plan.

Announcer: Get Luxe for less, only at Taco Bell.

You talked about value a little bit, and value is really the name of the game in the industry right now. It's also become very competitive. Everyone's offering some kind of value offering. How are you standing out?

I think the way we stand out is there's value promotions and there's value platforms. Value platforms, when you think CVM, Cravings Value Menu, we have 10 items under $3. And then when you look at our boxes, our value boxes, we have 5, 7, 9. Those are platforms that we invest in each and every day. And then we also have the promotions on digital that I think makes us unique in the industry.

Reporter: Taco Bell appeals to a more low-income demographic than the average for other Quick Service Restaurants.

Consumers are tightening their belts, been doing that for a while now, I'm sure you know that. How are you still having syncs for sales increases when a lot of other brands aren't?

We think about the menu as core and value in LTOs. It's a very exciting menu that people can come to. No matter income level, people have options within Taco Bell. And it's just a brand that people want to be involved with.

Taco Bell got me again with the box deal.

Let's talk about boxes, the Luxe Cravings Boxes. So a lot of those items are quite premium and would be more expensive if you bought them a la carte versus in the box. How are you making those profitable for franchisees?

We work with our suppliers, we work with our partners, we work with our franchisees, to make sure they're priced appropriately. And each box gives you something different. And we're always making sure that we have the right cost of sales, so at the end of the day, franchisees can be profitable.

Reporter: Franchisees have said that the boxes are profitable and good overall for their business because they get more people in the door.

Host: Give it up, Taco Bell fan.

Do you wanna be the biggest brand?

I wanna be the best brand, and I wanna make sure we are a global brand.

Taco Bell previously opened in Mexico and that didn't work. Could you see returning to Mexico?

I think anything's possible, this brand, and we wanna grow international, it's a big focus of ours as part of our overall strategy, and I think no country's off limit. Like I said, KFC has 28,000 restaurants. They're in our house and we're learning a lot how to be successful internationally.

So Taco Bell is doing great right now. There has to be things that keep you up at night. What are some of the biggest challenges here?

I think what keeps me up at night is just keeping the team motivated and not being complacent. We have incredible momentum, but to the R in RING The Bell, we wanna be relentless. We wanna keep our foot in the gas. Two, international. We wanna keep international growing. We're in open five markets this year. We're in 32 markets. Beverages, we have won the Mas Cafe, looking to grow that to 30 by the end of the year. And we think the opportunity is unlimited with the Mas Cafes around the world.

Sean, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for coming out, Heather.

Pleased how I did today, guys.

Crew Member: Thank you, man.

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