Taco Bell is rolling out the Salt & Straw Churro Ice Cream Taco to its nearly 10,000 U.S. restaurants starting September 1, the second limited-time dessert collaboration between the Irvine-based chain and Portland craft ice cream brand Salt & Straw. The $3.99 item features churro-flavored ice cream in a crispy waffle cone shell, finished with puffed rice and a dark chocolate-flavored coating — and marks the first time the Salt & Straw partnership has gone system-wide rather than being confined to select markets.
The Product and Price
The previous collaboration, the Cinnamon Ancho Tacolate, debuted at Salt & Straw scoop shops last year and sold out on launch weekend, generating significant wait times at the brand's 57 locations. That demand gave both parties the green light to develop a new, Taco Bell-exclusive item for broader distribution. At $3.99 per unit — available at the front counter, drive-thru, and kiosk — the Churro Ice Cream Taco sits in the premium impulse-dessert range that has proven productive for QSR chains competing for after-meal and standalone snack occasions. Quantities are limited per location, with a cap of five per order.
Live Más Café, Taco Bell's specialty beverage-forward concept operating in California, Las Vegas, Houston, and Dallas, is also debuting its first-ever collaboration item: the Salt & Straw Choco-Waffle Chiller, starting at $4.69. The blended frozen drink layers vanilla ice cream with churro crumbles and waffle cone pieces, topped with whipped cream, and is encased in a crackable chocolate shell. The café format represents a dispensed-beverage extension of the dessert program — a play that convenience-adjacent foodservice operators have used to stretch LTO appeal across multiple dayparts.
Loyalty and LTO Mechanics
Taco Bell is layering its Rewards program into the rollout with a Tuesday Drop on September 8. At 2 p.m. PT, Rewards members can enter via the app for a chance to win one of 100 limited-edition Salt & Straw x Taco Bell decorated coolers, each packed with three Churro Ice Cream Tacos. Total ARV of the prize pool is $3,500. The sweepstakes mechanic — app-gated, time-limited, loyalty-exclusive — is a tactic QSR and convenience operators alike have adopted to drive program enrollment and digital engagement around short-window LTOs.
"The Churro Ice Cream Taco builds on everything fans loved about the original collaboration, with a flavor that feels right at home on our menu," said Liz Matthews, Global Chief Food Innovation Officer at Taco Bell.
Tyler Malek, co-founder and head ice cream maker at Salt & Straw, noted that the original Tacolate's blowout demand made a system-wide follow-up a logical next step. "So when we had the chance to take the idea beyond our shops with Taco Bell, we wanted to dream up something completely new," Malek said.
Why It Matters for Operators
For convenience foodservice operators tracking QSR dessert strategy, the Salt & Straw play illustrates how craft-brand partnerships can compress the gap between premium scoop-shop positioning and mass-market accessibility. Salt & Straw's 57 locations generate outsized cultural reach relative to their footprint; Taco Bell's nearly 10,000 domestic units provide the volume. The $3.99–$4.69 price band also signals where the sweet-spot for premium impulse desserts is settling across foodservice channels — above commodity roller-grill territory but well within the range c-store operators have tested with proprietary dispensed beverage and frozen dessert programs.
The Live Más Café format itself is worth watching for operators considering specialty beverage-forward store-within-a-store concepts. With locations concentrated in high-traffic urban and tourism markets, it functions as a testbed for premium LTO beverage mechanics before any potential broader rollout. Both the ice cream taco and the Choco-Waffle Chiller are available while supplies last.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
