News

Taco John's uses innovative 2-day planning and cooking session to guide its future

May 25, 2016

The future of tacos is the meaty matter at issue at Taco John’s third annual menu innovation summit, a two-day brainstorming session for franchisees, industry partners and corporate personnel at the Food and Drink Resources test kitchen in Colorado. The summit delves into big decisions about coming trends in taco-dom around flavor and costs, according to a news release.

"We have an aggressive plan to grow Taco John's across the United States," said CEO Jeff Linville. "Industry-leading menu innovation is one of the key ingredients to our success. Our street tacos are a perfect example of how the right menu item can make our brand more relevant to millennials. … Now the challenge is to discover the next generation of flavors to keep them coming back."

The summit's first challenge was to brainstorm as many ideas as possible for the next generation of tacos, quesadillas and burritos.

“We made our mark in the QSR world with our meat-and-potato burrito,” said Bob Karisny, VP of menu strategy and innovation at Taco John’s. “Our goal is to develop the next generation burrito that can be made to order, contains authentic ingredients with bold flavors, and can be sold from a drive-thru window.”

The second part of the summit took place in the test kitchen where new items were prepared and then sampled and critiqued by a group of students.

Many of the current restaurant menu items came out of similar planning sessions and the same will likely happen with some of this year’s ideas, which will be honed and refined  before joining the menu.