The Taco Bell App Feature Every Fast Food Restaurant Should Adopt

Taco Bell is no stranger to foodies customizing menu items, but the fast food chain is now also allowing guests to customize the menu itself from a non-gastronomic angle: budget. Taco Bell released some of the best new fast food items of 2024, and this year, T-Bell also debuted the "name your price tool" on its mobile app.

To use the tool, customers determine how much they want to spend on their meal (in $5 increments ranging from $5 to $25) and the app automatically generates a random combination of menu items that fit within that price range. For example, a $10 meal might include a quesadilla and a three-cheese chicken flatbread melt. Not in the mood for a quesadilla? No worries — just hit the "refresh" button and the app will generate a new shopping cart with a different $10 combination of items.

Alternatively, if a foodie knows that they definitely want a Crunch Wrap supreme or a Mexican pizza, customers can "pin" certain items to their carts and the app will randomly generate other menu items to satisfy the remaining dollar amount. The taxes, tips, and fees are added later. The tool does not include drinks, freezes, combos, boxes, party packs, sauces, or early access items, but these can be added separately.

Thanks to Taco Bell's new app feature, ordering fast food doesn't have to mean relenting and making an uncomfortable splurge. The chain has long championed low-cost offerings with its sprawling value menu (cheesy roll-up fans, rise up). With any hope, this wallet-friendly app feature could pave the way for other fast food chains to present customers with different food combo options that fit within their budget — and indeed, the timing couldn't be better for such an arrival. In 2023, fast food prices industry-wide had risen by 29% in just four years, deterring many customers enough to skip the drive-thru and stay home. A tool like this could help combat industry-wide traffic reductions in 2025.

A recent Preply study published in October 2024 aimed to identify the U.S. cities with the most overpriced restaurants, by "conduct[ing] a language analysis of 57,245 Google reviews of over 10,000 restaurants in the top 50 major U.S. cities." Preply gauged customer dissatisfaction nationwide by looking for keywords such as "pricey" or "rip-off" and how frequently they were used by patrons, importantly noting, "Whether it's a high-end establishment or the fast food joint around the corner, overpriced restaurants are determined by perception of value."

Meanwhile, at other chains, inflammatory price hikes continue. Shake Shack raised its prices by 3% in March 2024 alone. In May, McDonald's USA President Joe Erlinger defended the chain's hikes, citing "viral social posts and poorly sourced reports that McDonald's has raised prices significantly beyond inflationary rates," he said, via FOX Business. Taco Bell's new value-centric app feature could attract inflation-weary foodies back to the drive-thru lane again.