QSR October 2022

TACO BELL’S STUNNING DEFY HAS HAD NO SHORTAGE OF GAWKERS SINCE OPENING.

On a springmorning in 2020, Lee Engler sat down for breakfast. The sting of the pandemic’s early rush had turned operators into survival gurus. But now, the future was back on the drawing board. Across the table from Engler, co-founder and CEO of Border Foods, a family-owned franchisee of Taco Bell with north of 230 locations, was Mike Strommen, a friend of Engler’s brother and co-founder, Jeff, who ran a company specializing in consumer retail engagement. Strommen had no history in fast food or sense of its conventional boxes. Yet the problem Engler presented wasn’t a foreign one: the channels of access, in terms of ordering, had become plentiful.

However, it boiled down to an age-old friction point—pickup.

www.qsrmagazine.com | QSR | OCTOBER 2022

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