Taco Bell Promotes Gluttony

Taco Bell is now promoting "the fourth meal." They created the "the meal between dinner and breakfast," to try to keep their share of the late night drunk-food market. The fourth meal concept revolves around the four taste/texture profiles Taco Bell offers: melty, crunchy, spicy and grilled.

Taco Bell has been in the drunk food market for a long time, but they have a lot of new competitors. Many McDonald's are now open 24 hours a day, Wendy's has been open until 1 a.m. for years, and even Sonic now stays open until midnight during the summer.

There is good reason everyone wants a piece of the drunk food pie. The average ticket of daytime fast-food consumer is $4.43 compared to and average ticket of $6.22 for late night fast-food consumers.

Taco Bell is pushing fourth meal hard. They've focused on it in every recent commercial, created an interactive Web site and even their bags promote their fourth meal concept. They are doing a good job promoting their baby, but the concept is based in American gluttony.

What other country eats four meals a day? Even in this country there are many families just trying to put food on the table. So promoting a fourth meal seems to encourage a country that is already obese. I'm don't doubt that this tactic will produce results. In fact, I'm confident it will help them grow their share in the drunk food market. And they are certainly right to go after this market, but the concept of the fourth meal promotes greediness and obesity to an extreme.

Tace Bells says, "If it's not fourth meal, it's just food. Many impoverished people would say, "I don't need four meals, I just need some food."