Taco Bell begins selling beer, wine and booze at Chicago location

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Taco Bell and booze: live mas indeed In Taco Bell's latest pitch to millennials, the new Cantina restaurants will have an open kitchen and serve beer, wine and frozen alcoholic drinks. Video provided by Newsy

CHICAGO — Taco Bell is ready to pour you a drink.

The official grand opening of the first booze-selling Taco Bell isn't until Sept. 22, but company officials opened their doors — and liquor cabinet — to customers on Tuesday for a "soft opening" of the fast-food chain's new location in the city's Wicker Park neighborhood.

Taco Bell, which has earned a reputation over the years as a good place to get a bite after a night of drinking, announced plans in June to experiment with selling beer, wine, sangria and spiked frozen drinks at the new Chicago location as it looks to gain a foothold in urban markets. A second location that will sell only beer and wine near San Francisco's AT&T Park is slated to open later this month, the company says.

The fast-food chain, owned by Yum Brands (YUM), boasts more than 6,000 outlets, mostly located in suburban areas. That model has worked well for the company, which gets roughly 70% of its sales from its drive-thru windows.

But the company knows that its Millennial customers increasingly are attracted to urban areas, where real estate is pricey. Company officials think that selling a stiffer drink might pad the receipts — the typical Taco Bell receipt is in the $7 range — and in turn help make their urbanization push more doable.

"To put in a drive-thru you need land," Neil Borkan, the Taco Bell franchisee who will operate the Chicago test location told USA TODAY. "Can you imagine buying an acre of land in a neighborhood like Wicker Park? You couldn't afford it. As real estate becomes more and more expensive, this kind of concept makes more sense."

Taco Bell is treading carefully into booze. While quick-service rival Starbucks (SBUX) recently announced it would accelerate its push of its beer and wine program and has applied for liquor licenses for hundreds of stores across the USA in recent months, Taco Bell spokesman Rob Poetsch said the company could potentially open 10 locations selling hard drinks next year.

Poetsch said the company currently is only looking at selling alcohol at new stores that will be branded as "Taco Bell Cantina." The cantina locations also will serve dine-in customers their food in plastic baskets (much like fast-casual Mexican restaurant Chipotle) and the menu will include new appetizer items (chicken tenders, rolled chicken tacos, mini quesadillas).

The featured items on the drinks menu include the Mountain Dew Baja Blast, Cantina Punch and Cantina Margarita freezes, which can be spiked with 1 ounce of Captain Morgan white rum, Ketel One vodka or Don Julio tequila. The rum- and vodka-spiked drinks sell for $6.19 plus tax, while the tequila-laced freeze will set customers back $7.19.

(The Cantina Punch and Cantina Margarita are new flavors. The company opted not to sell some other flavors, such as the Strawberry Starburst Freeze, that are available in most Taco Bell locations to keep marketing of candy items and alcohol separate, Borkan said.)

The menu also includes beer from Dos Equis and New Belgium Brewing, which will sell for $4 per draft. After much debate, Taco Bell brand manager Katie Gardiner and Borkan picked wines from two California wine makers, Steelhead Vineyards and Stack Wine.

Both wineries use innovative packaging that is helpful in a kitchen where space is tight. The Steelhead single-serving bottles of chardonnay and merlot are fitted with a small, plastic cup.

Taco Bell will sell Pinot Grigio and cabernet sauvignon varietals of Stack Wine, which got on Taco Bell officials' radar after being featured on the television show Shark Tank. Stack Wine comes in individually sealed, one-serving containers from which drinkers only need peel off a lid to get to their wine.

"We just really liked that it has portion control and the stemware is built in, and it feels like something no one else is doing in the wine industry," Gardiner said of Stack Wine.

Ahead of the opening of the Chicago location, Borkan agreed to hire a security guard for weekend nights to assuage concerns from some neighbors that his Taco Bell will become a center of drunken shenanigans and underage drinkers.

Employees, who went through a four-hour alcohol training course, have been instructed to card each customer who orders alcohol. The restaurant also agreed to stop selling booze at 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends.

In addition to the hard drinks, Taco Bell wants its urban locations to have a unique feel. The new Chicago restaurant is set in a 100-year-old building and features an open kitchen that gives customers a view of nearly every corner. The company also commissioned a Chicago graffiti artist who goes by the name Revise CMW to paint a giant installation along one of the walls.

The artist, whose real name is Won Kim, said he initially was apprehensive about doing work for the giant fast-food chain, but was pleasantly surprised when they told him they didn't want his piece to include any overt reference to their brand.

"At first, I was a little resistant to agreeing to work for this big corporation, but I knew if I didn't do it, they'd find some 21-year-old to take the job," said Kim, 35, who also is a chef. "At the end of the month, I got to pay the rent, too."