With its two fused tortilla shells and Pepper Jack cheese in the secret pocket, Taco Bell staffers knew the Quesalupa would be all about the cheese . . . more specifically the cheese pull.
What did consumers say at its Super Bowl launch?
That’s where Rob Poetsch, Taco Bell’s director of communications and engagement, came into play.
“We were all on-site on February 7 monitoring the Twitter feed,” said Poetsch. He went on to note that a majority of comments were favorable. However, some consumers posted on social media that they were not getting the famed cheese pull.
“We very quickly went to our operations team and said, ‘Look, this is what we are hearing and why is this so?’” after viewing comments posted via Twitter.
“We found a couple of operators were not following the correct procedures. So, we were able to very quickly go back to these restaurants and alert them to follow the correct procedures,” said Poetsch.
In another case, by monitoring Twitter, Poetsch and his team learned that Taco Bell’s Eastern time zone restaurants didn’t plan for the large crowds at the restaurant’s launch of its breakfast. That allowed the communications group to alert restaurants in later time zones to make more breakfast menu items.
When it comes to communication, Twitter is the platform of choice for Taco Bell. These days, the brand has some 35 million mentions each year. That’s up from 12 million just five years earlier. Taco Bell views Twitter as the most publically shared social media platform.
To learn more about the award-winning Quesalupa, with cheese and sour cream as its star ingredients, listen to audio comments from Taco Bell’s Rob Poetsch.
This Hoard’s Dairyman Intel article is part of an eight-part Dairy Food Maker series with Taco Bell. It details a partnership that began with Taco Bell and Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) in 2012 and continues to this day with Dairy Checkoff dairy scientists working directly at Taco Bell’s headquarters in the greater Los Angeles, Calif., area.
Click here to view previous reports from this Taco Bell series:
Cheese glues tortilla shells together
To read more about the Taco Bell experience and the organization’s partnership with dairy farmers, turn to pages 648 and 649 of the October 25 issue of Hoard’s Dairyman for the Food Maker series.
