Bell Beefer

by Taco Bell

1979 – 1996 RARE REVIVALS

Gone from the national menu by the mid-1990s — Taco Bell never announced an exact date, and a few sources place the phase-out as early as 1986. A short 2012 dollar-menu comeback at scattered California locations vanished almost as fast as it appeared.

Taco Bell's sloppy-joe-in-disguise: seasoned beef, cheese, lettuce, and taco sauce piled onto a plain hamburger bun, from an era when the Bell wasn't fully committed to being a Mexican joint. It faded from menus in the '90s, but the faithful never stopped grieving.

🧾 One more thingThe sandwich had a long identity crisis before settling on a name — a 1962 Chiliburger, then the Bell Burger, then finally the Bell Beefer around 1979. When Taco Bell axed it, devotees staged protest sit-ins they called 'Stank Festivals'; a brief 2012 dollar-menu revival around the San Francisco Bay Area was the closest they ever came to winning.

Filed under: Fast Food · the ’70s & earlier

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