Taco Bell launched its new breakfast menu Thursday, opening more than 5,500 of its restaurants at 7 a.m. or earlier.
The Mexican fast-food chain's innovative breakfast includes 13 new menu items, including the highly anticipated Waffle Taco (a warm waffle wrapped around sausage or bacon, scrambled eggs, cheese and syrup), A.M. Crunchwrap (scrambled eggs, hash browns, cheese and bacon or sausage in a warm tortilla), and bite-sized Cinnabon Delights.
Taco Bell is joining the quick-service breakfast craze, a $50 billion industry, to satisfy customers' wants.
"Our customers have asked us to do breakfast because there's a sea of sameness in breakfast sandwiches," Brian Niccol, president of Taco Bell, told USA Today.
Taco Bell's stake in the breakfast market could amount to $700 million, according to the restaurant consulting firm Technomic, thanks to the extensive breakfast options.
"We're going to reinvent breakfast," Niccol insists. "It's a transformational moment for the brand. It will expand our connection with consumers."
The company with the motto to "Live Más" released a unique marketing campaign -- created by the advertisement agency Deutsch L.A. -- featuring Ronald McDonald.
"To show you just how much people are loving Taco Bell's all new breakfast, we asked some very special people," the ad starts.
Taco Bell gathered 25 guys coast-to-coast whose real names just happen to be Ronald McDonald, who pledged their love for Taco Bell's Breakfast.
The commercial cleverly ends with the narrator saying: "Breakfast anybody can love -- even Ronald McDonald."
Even though McDonald's is still the leader of the $200 billion fast food industry, and holds the greatest stake in breakfast at a 25 percent market share, Taco Bell is deliciously fighting back with their biggest launch in all its 52 years.
"We intend to break the boring breakfast routine by making mornings fun again. By reinventing the traditional tastes of breakfast in a way that only Taco Bell can, we'll give America a fresh new perspective on classic breakfast, with the value we're famous for," Niccol said in a statement on the company's website.
