The taco emoji is still months away, but the next evolution in taco technology arrived today.
Taco Bell, a popular Twitter account with a chain of restaurants, unwrapped its refreshed website that’s, ahem, stuft with a handful of new features. Its clever new url (ta.co) uses a Colombian domain, and the site itself lets customers order, customize and pay for their meals online.
The digitally savvy company launched a food ordering app last fall, Live Más, which has been downloaded 4 million times. While relaunching a website seems backwards thinking given the ascendance of mobile, Taco Bell said in a statement that the new site is part of its “ongoing commitment to use technology to further improve the fast food experience.”
And it’s not like everyone has room for another app on their phones.
Besides bringing the key ingredients of the app, which is online ordering, to the Web, Taco Bell also introduced a nutrition calculator that is primed for some imaginative food hacking. Already, a writer at The Verge concocted a downright disgusting burrito that contains 3,500 calories, 11,000 mg of sodium and 203 grams of fat.
“This single burrito has enough calories and fat to comfortably feed a family of three for a full day,” they write.
With the new website, Taco Bell is also upping its content game with a new section called “The Feed,” described as a “publishing channel where Taco Bell will be collaborating with people, companies and cultural icons to curate new content about the brand.” The first profile is of electronic musician Robert Delong, who has a close relationship with the brand.
In the future, Taco Bell says its working with food delivery startup DoorDash to expand delivery nationwide and a remodel of its app that includes a “gamified feature to reflect the brand and drive loyalty.”
Perhaps once the taco emoji launches on iOS 9.1 in November, we can finally order a taco with it (a la Domino’s with its pizza slice) to achieve peak 2015.
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