Taco Bell Adds Interactive Entertainment to Menu

The 1950’s eat-at-home-TV-dinner is being flipped, as a dining room TV network is coming soon to your local Taco Bell.

The quick-serve restaurant has signed a deal to install an in-store television network and free Wi-Fi at its 5,600 locations throughout the US by 2015.

Forget CNN or Fox News nattering away in the background — the programming will include interactive content that includes games, polls, iTunes songs, as well as opt-in text messaging and social marketing campaigns.

The goal of the agreement between Taco Bell and IndoorDIRECT's Restaurant Entertainment Network is to convert Taco Bell’s 36.8 million weekly drive-through customers to in-restaurant diners, and reach an estimated total of 48 million customers.

"Our consumers come to us for great tasting tacos and burritos, and now we're enriching their experience with the addition of indoorDIRECT's Restaurant Entertainment Network," stated Taco Bell CMO David Ovens.

“Being able to help Taco Bell entertain their guests is a unique and sought-after value proposition…[It will] provide advertisers and content providers the ability to reach millions of Taco Bell guests while they eat,” added Michael Winton, President and Co-Founder of indoorDIRECT.

It's the biggest deal to date for IndoorDIRECT, which has a base of 1,036 locations, largely fast food chains including Denny's, Carl's Jr., Hardees, and Wendy's, reaching an estimated "202 million (90%) of all Americans age 18 or older have visited a quick service restaurant in the past month," according to Scarborough Research.

It's also a potential bonanza for advertisers, as Indoor Direct's Restaurant Entertainment Network has a mix of 70% content and 30% advertising,  currently produced as bite-sized segments in two hosted magazine-style shows, theBITE and theBITE Weekend, with content providers that include the NFL, PGA, NASCAR, AP, Turner Broadcasting, Fox, Sony Television, BBC America, Discover Card and major record labels. 

Each Taco Bell will be outfitted with large, silent video screens at the cash registers, and larger screens with audio in the eating areas, transforming  them into virtual multimedia ad platforms…with browser, live ticker updates and weather and time module ad avails for brand sponsorship.

As indoorDIRECT puts it, “we hit them right where they eat.”