Fast food:
Taco Bell near AT&T Park repositions itself as a cantina.
Brushed-steel pendant lights. Exposed brick. Subway tile. Reclaimed barn-wood stools. This could be any espresso bar or farm-to-table eatery in San Francisco, right?
Wrong. This is Taco Bell Cantina, which opened Thursday South of Market, near AT&T Park. It’s the fast food giant’s attempt to reach the city-dwelling, tech-savvy Millennial, an operation it’s calling the “Taco Bell urban restaurant concept.” And what better place to find such a creature than in its natural habitat, San Francisco? One other Cantina location, in Chicago’s Wicker Park, opened last week.
“This is a real different take on your father’s Taco Bell,” David Grieve, managing partner of Golden Gate Bell Restaurant Holdings, the franchise that runs the Cantina, said at a media preview while munching on a beef taquito.
Is some exposed brick all it takes to get the startup crowd eating chalupas? Once it obtains its liquor license and begins serving beer and wine, could this be a happy hour haunt for techies?
Taco Bell — owned by Yum Brands, which does about $13 billion in yearly revenue — has long been a phenomenon of the suburbs. Though Golden Gate Bell operates 85 Taco Bell locations in the Bay Area, from Santa Rosa to Watsonville, it’s never had a major presence in San Francisco until now. Cities, said Taco Bell public relations manager Matt Prince, “are an area where we have long been underrepresented.” Whereas Taco Bell thrived in the ’80s and ’90s, when consistency was considered a virtue, Prince said that now, “you have Millennials living in urban areas, looking for unique, community-focused experiences.”
“Experience” is key to this rebrand: Taco Bell Cantina is catering to both the multitasking business-lunch crowd — with a mobile ordering app and pickup window — and the coffee shop lingerers. Electrical outlets and USB plugs are set next to almost every seat.
Though the Cantina doesn’t resemble its chain predecessors, it does recall a much newer and Millennial-friendly Mexican-food chain: Chipotle. In traditional fast food establishments, cooks and deep fryers are often hidden away from the customer’s sight. But here, similar to Chipotle, a glass window separates you from a clear view of the employees assembling dishes, the shredded iceberg lettuce and ground beef clearly displayed in individual containers. It looks like a sandwich line.
Progress on liquor license
In addition to the conventional Taco Bell menu, the Cantina features a post-5 p.m. menu of “shareables,” including home-style nachos (vegetarian, and the Taco Bell staff were quick to point out that the cheese was cheddar, not nacho), beef taquitos (“inspired by barbacoa,” one employee explained) and — the runaway hit so far at the Chicago location — chicken tenders, served with buffalo and avocado-ranch sauces.
Diners this week were wondering: Where’s the booze? Taco Bell had promised that the Cantinas would serve alcohol — beer and wine in the San Francisco location, liquor, too, in Chicago — but the liquor license here is still pending. They’re hoping to have it in a month or so, Grieve said: “The neighbors have some concerns. We’ve been meeting with them. I think we’re making some really good progress.”
San Francisco’s Anchor Steam, as well as Firestone Walker of Paso Robles (San Luis Obispo County) and Mexican import Dos Equis, will probably be on the beer list, said Golden Gate Bell CEO Randy Rodrigues. For wine, he said that he’s looking at red and white versions from Stack, which produces wine in individually sealed cups, and he expects to also offer sangria.
The mobile pickup window is the urban reinvention of the drive-through. Rodrigues hopes that nearby companies will use the app to order office lunches. A digital kiosk (evidently, Millennials find it tiresome to order food from human beings) should arrive soon.
One employee, Kamisha Haley, who until now was working at a Taco Bell in Oakland, said she loves the Cantina. “It’s like a sports bar,” she said, gesturing to two large television monitors showing football games. “You can hang out and relax.”
The Cantina concept is a step away from the maximum-efficiency fast food model: Woo instead affluent, experience-driven young people willing to seek out and pay more for food and atmosphere that reflect their values.
Anticipating arrival
Will they bite? On Thursday afternoon, two women who work in the adjacent building walked by, inquiring when the Cantina would open. They had been anticipating its arrival and were disappointed to learn that the liquor license was not yet secured. Were they Taco Bell fans? “Who doesn’t like Taco Bell?” one said. “You just can’t eat it very often.”
“When they start serving liquor, we’ll come down with our co-workers after work,” the other said.