Taco Bell Revives Subscription as Restaurants Seek New Loyalty Incentives

As restaurants look to drive traffic and frequency, Taco Bell is bringing back its taco subscription.

The quick-service restaurant (QSR) giant announced Tuesday (Oct. 3) that it is bringing back its Taco Lover’s Pass, offering loyalty members one free taco a day for 30 days after a $10 payment, with the passes available for purchase for two days.

“The return of Taco Lover’s Pass exemplifies Taco Bell’s innovative spirit and creativity, leveraging digital experiences to deliver unrivaled value in modern ways,” Dane Mathews, the brand’s chief digital officer, said in a statement. “We’re embracing our fan’s passion for this digital pass along with the potential it holds to transform our retail experiences.”

The news comes as, in the face of traffic challenges, restaurants increasingly look beyond points-per-dollar loyalty models to find more creative ways to draw consumers into their stores. Many have been turning to subscription programs to incentivize more frequent visits.

Fast-casual giant Panera Bread has been driving customer acquisition with its beverage subscription program, Unlimited Sip Club. P.F. Chang’s has its rewards program subscription, offering free delivery, expanded rewards and “VIP-level service” for $6.99 a month. Sweetgreen has its Sweetpass+ subscription, where consumers pay $10 a month for up to one $3 discount a day off their order.

Smaller brands are joining the mix too. In June, Ohio-based chain Piada Italian Street Food, which has around 50 locations across seven states, announced the launch of its Stickscription plan, offering loyalty members a free dough stick and fountain drink every day for a monthly fee. In February, Primanti Bros. Restaurant and Bar, which has 38 locations in and around Pennsylvania, launched a pizza subscription, offering a slice a day every day for around $10 a month.

In an interview with PYMNTS earlier this year, Daniel Shlossman, then chief marketing officer at Sweetgreen, said for subscriptions to be cost-effective for restaurant brands, they must appeal to those who are not already ultra-frequent customers.

“You don’t just want your paid members to be folks who are already visiting three, four or five times a month,” Shlossman said. “If you’re doing that, and they don’t increase their frequency, you’re just basically discounting for the sake of discounting.”

There is a share of consumers open to the restaurant subscription model. PYMNTS Intelligence from last year’s study, “Digital Divide: Restaurant Subscribers and Loyalty Programs,” created in collaboration with Paytronix, showed that 17% of consumers who are not currently members of any restaurant subscription services are “very” or “extremely” interested in subscribing in the future. Additionally, 42% of U.S. consumers are curious about them but have yet to sign up.

The limited-time model that Taco Bell is using here makes sense for a food and beverage subscription, given that these kinds of memberships tend to struggle to hold onto their customers over long periods, according to PYMNTS Intelligence from the June study “Subscription Commerce Readiness Report: The Loyalty Factor.”

The report was created in collaboration with sticky.io and drew from a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers with retail product subscriptions as well as 200 subscription commerce providers across nine industries. It found that when it comes to retention, food and beverage subscriptions underperform relative to other kinds of product subscriptions.