one of the great things about him. I probably would have showed up with a lawyer and gotten booted out. [I told him,] ‘This is such a great idea, this is gonna be freakin’ huge!’”
And it was. In the first ten weeks following its much-ballyhooed launch, Taco Bell sold a staggering 100 million Doritos Locos Tacos. Two more varieties—the transcendent Cool Ranch and the serviceable Flamas—were later introduced. The company boasted that the new national obsession led to the creation of some fifteen thousand jobs. Even those who might not have been expected to take these russet-colored shells seriously did so with aplomb. “The shell is paper-thin, with a delicate crunch,” William Grimes wrote in The New York Times. “The shell does not overpower the taco filling. So far, so good … The meat filling just lay there like ballast, but the lettuce was fresh and crisp and the grated Cheddar had an assertive tang. In other words, for what it is, the Doritos Locos taco is pretty good.”
Back in Arkansas, the realization of Todd’s dream stirred serious excitement. Jimmy tells a story of how his daughter’s thrill over the Doritos Locos commercials offered the chance to teach her not to feel limited about her ambitions. “You can do it!” he told her. “It’s not just those special people that get to become famous or go to the moon. Anybody can do it.”
Less than two years later, in late 2013, Doritos Locos Taco sales had surpassed the $1 billion mark, making it the most successful product rollout in Taco Bell history. Meanwhile, in Arkansas, Todd, just forty-one years old, lay ailing of cancer. The father of two young daughters, he had attained some small degree of celebrity as the champion (and, by some belief, the creator) of a wildly successful product.
As his friends and relatives worked to form a network and begin crowdfunding efforts to help pay for Todd’s treatment and for the family’s future, the story got more complicated; all the attention that had been so instrumental in promoting the idea before now took on a different tenor. After Taco Bell donated $1,000 to the fundraising efforts, it attracted media attention and ignited a firestorm of criticism about whether the company could or should do more.
Ultimately, Todd’s struggle was brief. He went to the doctor with a headache in July and passed away on Thanksgiving. Following his funeral, those close to Todd sought a less somber way to salute him, a celebration more befitting his youth and punch. “We went to Taco Bell. What better place to go?” Jimmy told me. “I don’t remember who came up with it, everybody knew that was what we needed to do. It was a big send-off, a lot of us hadn’t seen each other in years. Seemed like the natural thing to do. I’ve got a picture of it somewhere, my daughter’s got a face full of Locos Tacos. It just seemed like the proper send-off. It’s one of those clichés, it’s what he would have wanted.”
Word of the honorary excursion to Taco Bell emanated out from Little Rock and into a world desperate to feel a connection. For months after Todd’s passing, Ginger received condolences from near and far. “I got a ton of strange messages from random people all over the country. A lot of them were widows who said, ‘I know what you’re going through’; people who had lost children who would say, ‘I know the grief.’ It was weird to me that they were contacting me, but for the most part they were kindhearted, they meant well. A lot of them were also photos of strangers eating Doritos Locos Tacos. It was still kind of neat, the attention that he got. He would have gotten a kick out of it, I know. He would have cracked up.”
From funeral cakes and shiva spreads to Irish poteen and Mormon potatoes, food has often comforted during times of mourning. Regardless of whether tributes are affixed to an ancient tradition or customized to modern taste, they enact a feeling of membership and solace. That the Doritos Locos Taco could be a national sensation and still hold a deeply intimate meaning reflects the degree to which our inherent American identity is intertwined with these products. They span far beyond our likes and dislikes to symbolize memories of life’s significant moments. A universal and accessible collective memory to which we can all belong.
14 THE FAST-CASUAL FRONTIER
My favorite restaurant is the one that loves me