Prices of sauce vary by location distributor and whether it is franchise or corporate owned… speaking from experience my location pays 19.62 for mild, 21.18 for hot and 25.71 for fire per the case which contains 2400 packs. As an individual store we waste about $23.2 per week in sauces alone and 1206.40 per annum and we have one of the best rates for waste in our market…some stores waste at least 15x more than us on any one item…the franchises being independent had a lot to do with that though and more than 80% are franchise owned…however if it were one big corporation with a waste similar to my store you would be looking at roughly 8 million dollars wasted per annum for the company
Zombie alert! I usually notice when I see someone is banned…
Anyway, I sometimes go to Del Taco just for the Inferno sauce. That stuff…is…AWESOME! makes everything awesome. I put it on almost everything I cook. I always ask them for fistfuls of it, but in reality I barely ever get even 1 per taco. But sometimes a new guy will load me up. I garauntee not a single one ever goes to waste.
How do you know how many packets are “wasted?” Do you mean given to customers as part of their order? How much do you “waste” on bags to put the food in? How much do you “waste” on napkins or straws?
Look for Cholula or Tapatio.
Thank you! You may notice some teasing about “Zombies,” because we call a very old thread that has been reanimated a zombie thread…but you actually provided some very useful, fact based information that wasn’t in the thread until this point, so thank you!
You must be one of those new fangled smart and quick moving zombies, instead of the ol’ Romero shufflers. 
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board. We’re a little weird. Stick around.
At the TB near my house, the same people have been working there continuously for over 20 years. Always wondered how that was possible, until by some chance encounter I happened to befriend the district manager. They’re selling drugs out of there, and have been successfully doing so for a long, long time. I guess you could say that all the meth fiends in Simi Valley quiere Taco Bell. I’d wager that exercising portion control on the sauce packets is not a high priority among the crew or the management. And no, I don’t think the stuff is blue.
Could also be “advertising”. You see the packet lying around, hey Taco Bell sounds good.
Probably by having an internal policy saying something like “employees should give two sauce packets per menu item”, multiplying that rate by how many menu items they’re selling, and then comparing that theoretical rate of use to how often they actually have to buy new boxes of sauce packets.
I notice you wrote this in 2009, so it may not have been available then, but they now sell Taco Bell sauce in the grocery store. I have a bottle of it in my fridge.
Since this is about food, let’s move it to Cafe Society.
Note that this thread was started in 2009.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I don’t know, but I can tell you that it’s the same at Del Taco. I always order the same thing: an 8 layer veggie burrito. No drink, no side order. And they always give me at least 10 sauce packets, even tho I only need 1; 2 at most. I’ve taken to telling them “just 2 please” because I hate dealing with the waste. For the most part, when I ask they do just give me a couple.
I’ll have to ask next time I go: do they train you to give people as many as you can grab at one time or what? Why do they do that?
You can get Cholula in packets, even!
Zombie thread, I know–CHOLULA PACKETS.
Wow. thanks!
Gotta be right up there with indoor plumbing and sliced bread, right? 
OTOH, there are people like me who are always demanding **more **taco sauce packets. No, the basic handful isn’t enough. I require at least a handful and a half!
Missed edit window: Cholula packets when you don’t want a case of them.
When your Grade F beef that’s not fit for canine consumption yet it goes into your tacos costs pennies per pound, you can spring for some extra taco sauce packets.
I’ve never worked for Taco Bell, but I used to run a Jack in the Box, and I can testify that most of our sauce packets came in cases of 200 apiece that it cost the store about $5-10 to order. So really, you’re talking pennies apiece per packet; the cost to the store of handing out extra packets isn’t much more than they spend on napkins or free soda refills for dine-in customers. In fact, at Jack, we were encouraged to give out extra packets of ranch and what not, the idea being that the customer would probably throw them in the fridge instead of getting rid of them, and the next time they looked in the fridge they’d see that packet with the logo on it and it’d be a brand impression that might get them jonesing for another visit.
I personally have yet to completely use up my supply of Diablo sauce that Taco Bell was handing out like candy this year. Hopefully, the handful of packets I have left will sustain me until they inevitably bring it back again.
Must vary by location. I used to hit the Taco Bell drive-thru late at night quite often and they were always really chintzy with the hot sauce. I would have to insist I wanted a LOT of sauce and still only got like 5 packets. That’s why I always go inside the restaurant and just grab huge handfuls of packets on my way out. I have a whole drawer full of them at home.