Dive Brief:
- Taco Bell’s loyalty program helped the restaurant recover from a Cyclospora outbreak this summer, parent company Yum Brands CEO Chris Turner said on a Q3 2026 earnings call Tuesday.
- Following the outbreak, loyalty members returned to Taco Bell twice as quickly as non-loyalty customers, according to Turner.
- Yum, which also operates KFC and Habit Burger & Grill, saw global loyalty program membership rise rapidly over the course of the quarter, according to Turner. Taco Bell’s loyalty membership increased 25% year over year, driven by strong growth in the U.S.
Dive Insight:
Yum Brands sees loyalty as a key part of Taco Bell’s business strategy, from recovering from the Cyclospora outbreak to having its AI-powered drive-thrus reach their full potential.
“Loyalty is central to our raise the bar priority of battling for future consumers who seek more personalized, relevant and seamless experiences,” Turner said during the call. “It also helps us build deeper, more direct relationships with them.”
Yum is pleased with how quickly Taco Bell recovered from the traffic hit it took from the Cyclospora outbreak, according to Turner. Part of its strategy was its Tuesday Drops promotion, which offers a different deal every Tuesday and is only available through its loyalty app.
“That brought our fans back in droves,” Turner said. “It also resulted in us actually growing the loyalty membership base faster than normal, so we got a long-term benefit that came from that.”
While loyalty helped Taco Bell recover, it wasn’t enough to save the brand from a negative quarter. Global same-restaurant sales fell 4% year over year at Taco Bell, while systemwide sales fell 2% year over year to $4.3 billion, according to an earnings report.
One bright spot for Taco Bell is the drive-thru voice AI system that it has steadily rolled out to 900 locations over the past two years.
Restaurants with voice AI have seen a 6% improvement in drive-thru satisfaction and 1.5% higher sales, driven by higher average check size and improved associate retention, according to Ranjith Roy, CFO of Yum Brands. Taco Bell will deploy voice AI to more than 1,500 locations by the end of the year, with plans to add new features in the future.
“The team's already thinking about loyalty integrations, multi-language support, multi-lane drive-through support, and new operator dashboards to better integrate the human factor in the restaurant with the AI that's helping the human — all of which makes the product more compelling over time,” Roy said.
