Taco Bell's Live Más Café beverage concept is accelerating its footprint with entries into the greater Indianapolis area and Las Vegas, plus continued Southern California expansion, as the Irvine-based chain maps a course to $5 billion in annual beverage sales by 2030. The moves, announced October 15, are accompanied by a four-drink horchata menu debut exclusive to Café locations and a December 10 rollout of select items to Taco Bell's broader national network.

The Numbers

Live Más Café has served approximately 1.3 million beverages since launch across its current 39 locations in Southern California, Houston, Dallas and Indiana. The chain cited "favorable transaction growth" at Café sites without disclosing specific same-store figures. The $5 billion beverage target by 2030 represents a substantial lift from the chain's existing beverage mix and is intended to be informed by Café learnings before scaling. The four new horchata drinks are priced between $4.19 and $5.29, positioning them at the premium end of quick-service beverage pricing.

Market Expansion

The Las Vegas flagship, developed with franchise partner Diversified Restaurant Group, will occupy a converted shipping container adjacent to the existing Taco Bell Cantina at 3717 S. Las Vegas Blvd., opening later this fall. The format adds a Vegas-exclusive roster of alcoholic beverages — including a spiked Baja Blast and a Cold Brew Cinnatini — alongside branded merchandise, signaling that Taco Bell is willing to tailor the Café model to high-traffic tourist corridors. In Indianapolis, three locations will open before year-end: two company-owned and one operated by KMAC Enterprises, a new Live Más Café franchise development partner. The first opens October 22 in West Lafayette, with Greenfield and Muncie to follow. Three additional Southern California Cafés are planned at Century City Mall, Irvine and Tustin.

Innovation Pipeline

The horchata launch brings four distinct formats to Café menus: a Purple Horchata Chiller (frozen, vanilla ice cream base), a Chocolate Horchata Cold Brew Float (cold brew layered with churro crumbles and dark chocolate syrup), a Strawberry Horchata Refresca (freeze-dried strawberry pieces, vanilla-spiced base) and a Vanilla Spiced Horchata Refresca. The Strawberry and Vanilla Spiced Refrescas, plus a new Vanilla Spiced Horchata Freeze, will roll nationally on December 10 for a limited time — a model Taco Bell has used before to test Café concepts ahead of chain-wide distribution. Liz Matthews, Global Chief Food Innovation Officer at Taco Bell, said the Café format gives the brand a live testing ground. "Seeing that excitement continue to grow across our Cafés tells us we're onto something special," she said, "and we're ready to take it even further with bold new drinks and more ways for fans to experience Live Más Café."

The best-selling launch to date — the You Seem Pretty Pink for a Baja Blast — underscores the concept's ability to generate incremental traffic, with breakfast and afternoon identified as the two highest-volume dayparts. That daypart skew is strategically significant: quick-service operators have long sought to penetrate the afternoon beverage occasion dominated by Starbucks and, more recently, by Dutch Bros and regional specialty coffee chains. Taco Bell's entry into that window with a differentiated, culturally inflected menu — horchata-forward rather than espresso-forward — offers a differentiated value proposition in a crowded beverage-led QSR segment. International expansion of the beverage learning is also being explored, though no markets or timelines were specified. For more on how major chains are engineering beverage programs to drive traffic, see recent F&B Industry News coverage of the category.

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.