When buying taco supplies I like to buy authentic imported stuff. But some grocers don’t have that so I get what they got.
What I’ve noticed is, the Taco Bell brand shells/salsa/sauces are among the least expensive. On par, and sometimes cheaper than the store brands. Any reason why?
Well, they are a Yum! brand, so there is the economy of scale there. When you are producing shells and sauce for 6446 stores, what’s another run or 12 for retail?
Plus the fact that the shells are cheaply made. Too little masa, so they are very thin.
The products you find under the Taco Bell brand name in grocery stores aren’t made by Taco Bell, or Yum!, at all – Kraft Brands licenses the name and logo.
It’s Taco Bell. Any connection with actual food is tenuous at best. It owes its existence to the fact that sometimes Bad Mexican is the only thing that will do.
Hell, then there are even larger economies of scale. 
Plus what Johnny Q said.
Pricing’s not based on the cost of the items; this is a fallacy that a lot of people subscribe to. Just because something’s cheap or not doesn’t translate at all into the final price, except if the manufacturers are in a price war or something.
Generally speaking, the marketers have identified a particular market segment, which is a group of consumers who meet some profile (elderly women, teenage boys, middle-aged white men, etc…) and they tailor both the product packaging, advertising and pricing to appeal to that particular segment.
So for example, if you’re aiming at say… white households earning more than $100k per year, you’ll price your product higher than if you were aiming it at single black mothers making less than $20k per year even though the cost of the product would be exactly the same. This is for two reasons- first, pricing says a lot about the product- higher price is frequently equated with higher quality, and second, you want to charge as much as you can without adversely hurting sales, which is what’s called “what the market will bear.”
So apparently the Taco Bell people are aiming their taco supplies at people who are cheap for one reason or another; I also suspect that there’s a certain assumption from the restaurant that Taco Bell = cheap and reasonable quality, so they’re probably working from there as well.
They are aiming at people with no tastebuds.
When I think of Taco Bell I think of value. And the bathroom.
Honestly, I think people have it backwards. It’s not that Taco Bell is bad but the poor have gotten used to it. It is that people who don’t like Taco Bell have gotten used to the taste of the “real stuff” and can’t avoid comparing the two.
In my opinion, they’re completely different, but they are both good in their own way, just like Mexican vs. Tex-Mex.
Taco Bell can be cheap. But if I want to avoid feeling like shit for hours, I have to pay the premium for steak or chicken instead of ground beef. In a meal, this makes Taco Bell comparable, if not more expensive, compared to other fast food places.
It’s because all restaurants are Taco Bell John Spartan.
I don’t think I’ve bought their shells, but their refried beans are cheap and really, really good compared to other brands. Probably more salt or something, but I don’t care!
Slight update:
At my local grocery, the Taco Bell taco kit was $2.99, and the Ortega brand one was also $2.99. That’s the only Taco Bell product I could find, which I thought odd.
Maybe they’re being discontinued or something?
Oh… and as for canned refried beans, Goya Refried Mayocoba/Frijoles Peruanos are the most awesome refried beans ever, if you add a tad bit of salt.
I don’t even bother with any of the meat at Taco Bell. I order everything with beans instead of meat = no digestive troubles.
I’ve never had digestive problems as a result of Taco Bell food, so I’m not sure I understand why everyone else claims to.
Taco Bell products are inexpensive because shredded cardboard is pretty cheap.
But, also quite delicious.
Or, perhaps, that’s just the only item in their line that your grocery store carries; it’s not at all uncommon for stores to not carry every product in a line-up, as there’s a tremendous amount of competition for shelf space in the supermarket. Stores very routinely replace weak-selling SKUs with new items.
It may be that they carried more TB items at one point, but that kit is the only one which sold well enough in that store to justify its continued presence there.