Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen, the Front Line in the Stunt-Food Wars | The New Yorker

How did the chain outdo Burger King’s Bacon Sundae, Pizza Hut’s hot-dog-stuffed crust, Cinnabon’s Pizzabon, and KFC’s fried-chicken-flavored nail polish?

Save this story Save this story Lois Carson always wanted to find a new way to fold a tortilla. “Life’s like an experiment to me,” she said. For twenty-three years, when she worked for Taco Bell as a product developer, she thought and thought about how a tortilla might be wrapped around taco fillings in the shape of a hexagon. She wanted people to be able to pick up the stuffed tortilla with one hand, even while driving, without it falling apart. “It was just something that came into my mind,” she said, seated in a booth at a Taco Bell in Orange County, California. Carson is seventy-three and

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