When I heard that now you can get Taco Bell delivered, I had to try it right away.  Here are my thoughts on the service, coming from a real life FastFoodophile rather than a reporter or press release.

First off, you should note that Taco Bell is not delivering directly.  They’ve partnered with a service called Door Dash.  As near as I can tell, Door Dash is kind of like Uber for food delivery.  You place an order through the app or website, and the order gets referred to some dude who will go through the drive-thru and bring your food to you.

Door Dash and the delivery person make their money through charging a $4 delivery fee, asking for a tip, and marking up the food.  Because I’m the kind of guy who knows Taco Bell’s menu/prices off the top of my head, I could recognize that each item Door Dash offered was about $0.50 to $1.00 more than it would be at the store.  All together, the order for my wife and I cost $21.56 for $11-$12 worth of food.  That’s slightly less than what we would pay for Dominos to deliver, so I’d say it’s worth the price.

The Door Dash interface needs some work.  The menu is broken down into several sub-menus, with no search function, and the categories are not particularly logical or intuitive.  This can be kind of annoying when dealing with a complicated menu like Taco Bell.  Is that item you want under “Our Favorites,” “Burritos,” “Cantina Power Menu,” “Specialites,” or “Cravings/Dessert Menu?”  You’ll have to look through each category individually to find out.

Also, they do not include Taco Bell’s complete menu.  My wife really wanted a Grilled Stuft Nacho, but for some reason you can’t get that through Door Dash.  We wasted a bunch of time digging through their arbitrary sub-menus, both in the app and on the website, before giving up.

Door Dash texts you when the order is picked up.  Because of this, I could tell that too much time passed between the driver going through the drive thru and when he arrived at our apartment.  I assume he was picking up orders for many people at once, and then delivering them in turn.  This means that your food may not arrive piping hot.  I doubt the drivers have any technology like Dominos Heatwave bags, and instead the food is just sitting in a bag in their car.  On the other hand, if they did their pick-ups and deliveries one at a time, they would probably have to charge more.  I think Taco Bell is still pretty good when it’s been sitting for half an hour.  But if you feel like you need it straight from the grill/oven, this is something to be wary about.

Another drawback is the delivery hours.  You can only get delivery between 9:30 AM and 10:00 PM.  That’s good for normal meal hours.  But if you’re a stoner or drunk looking to satisfy some late-night cravings without leaving the house, Door Dash and Taco Bell won’t help you.

Also, they made a mistake on our order in our favor.  We ordered a 4-piece Cap’n Crunch Delights, but they brought us a 12-piece.  So that was nice.  (I’ll have a review for the Cap’n Crunch Delights up shortly.)

In summary, Taco Bell delivery has some flaws. It’s not everything you wish it would be.  But it’s still Taco Bell brought to your door, which is pretty awesome in itself.

Edit: One other thing I should note: The Door Dash app will also deliver from In N Out.  The main reason I don’t eat at In N Out much is because I can’t tolerate the long lines, so this opportunity to skip the lines should be great.  But I feel like In N Out would really suffer from getting cold, so I’m hesitant to try using Door Dash for it.