Taco Bell Looks to Doritos Loco Taco to Save it From Bad Times

​We've covered this before, the Doritos Loco Taco, the taco made from a Nacho Cheese Doritos shell and. . . yeah, that's the draw. It should be a hit when it appears, as stoners and fast-food freaks camp out for a week, eat it, then go back to their CrunchWrap Supreme.

But Taco Bell is banking on the Doritos Loco Taco--not just for a bump, but to save the company from irrelevancy.

​The revelation came earlier this week, according to Nation's Restaurant News, at parent company Yum! Brands' annual investor conference. Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed told investors that Taco Bell suffered a bad year because of the fake-beef lawsuit that went nowhere, plus because the Bell didn't offer anything new. ""It was very clear that we didn't have enough innovation to overcome what we didn't anticipate happening," Creed said.

The salvation? The Doritos Loco Taco.

"There are 34 different bun types in the quick-service category and only one kind of taco shell," NRR quoted Creed as saying. "With the Doritos Locos Taco shell, the three test markets were driving incredible sales and a lot of incremental traffic. It also was a massive operations win, improving the speed of our transactions by 12 seconds."

Can the stoners dream save the day? Stay tuned...

Follow Stick a Fork in it on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook.