Today, Taco Bell shocked the fast-food industry when they stated plans of giving up kids’ meals and toys in all of its branches.
Greg Creed, Taco Bell’s CEO reasoned as stated in USA Today, “The future of Taco Bell is not about kids. This is about positioning the brand for Millennials.”
He projected that the kids’ meals will be sold until sometime in January 2014.
According to the Federal Trade Commission Data, the kids’ meal is a great attraction for a kid, which is why the industry sells greater than 1.2 billion of them yearly in the U.S. In 2011, Jack-in-the-Box removed toys from its kids’ meals and Taco Bell is the first national fast-food chain to remove kids meals altogether.
Taco Bell’s move came just in time when fast-foods are being pressured by health advocates, parents, and lawmakers to make their kids’ meals nutritious and stop alluring kids with toys linked with Hollywood’s top movies.
"It's a constructive step forward that Taco Bell will no longer use toys to encourage kids to pester their parents to go to their restaurants. By constantly churning out new toys, fast-food chains have a new angle every six to eight weeks for marketing to kids," says Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the CSPI.
About $580 million worth of marketing strategies are spent yearly by fast-food chains to children under age 12, $340 million of which is used on the licensing and production of toys.
“But Taco Bell's move has little to do with any of that. Kids’ meals account for half of 1% of Taco Bell's overall sales. It's fairly inconsistent for an edgy, ‘twenty something’ brand to offer kids meals," Creed says.
For more than a decade, Taco Bell has not promoted its kids meals on TV or in social media, he noted.
It will cost a little more for children to eat at Taco Bell after the kids’ meals are gone.
But Creed says parents are in favor because they will no longer be forced by their kids to eat at Taco Bell just because of a toy.
"It's not that we don't like kids. We're empowering parents", he concluded.
