If steak is so expensive, how does Taco Bell sell a double steak burrito so cheap?

its not steak

It is probably offset for when they overcharge for what they actually get ridiculously cheap.

(e.g. a 2 liter at the store = $1, a drink a taco bell (much less volume than a 2 liter) = $1, etc.)

@uber let’s hope that isn’t the case

Part of the reason is that they get you to come in and buy the burrito because it is cheap and then you buy a soda and nachos to go along with it. They make very little on the burrito but they make tons from the other stuff. $1.59 for a large soda that only costs a few cents to make.

edit :: What snoopy said..

What makes you think steak is expensive? It’s not like they’re using Filot Mignon or Kobe Beef.

Steak is cheaper then chicken in many cases.

@jballou what makes you think it isnt?

@uberbatman – They are not using premium quality steak by any stretch of the imagination. The steak they use is low-grade and cheap, and they are getting it at-cost.

They aren’t paying what you or I would pay in a restaurant for a decent steak.

@jballou as reflected by my first comment lol. I misunderstood what you were saying, i thought you meant steak in general wasnt expensive.

The “meat” they use is probably cow ass! ha ha!!

meow, bad kitty! get back in that burrito

You or I could go to any grocery store and buy a whole pound of cheap steak for under 4 bucks. If you buy it in a roast form, maybe $2.50. Imagine if you could by tons of it, right from the supplier, and you didn’t care about the quality. You could get it for a buck a pound most likely. Then you put about a quarter pound of it in a double stufft burrito, that’s 25 cents worth of beef.

That soda they charged you $1.59 for…that cost them 7 cents.

Taco Bell does not even have kitchens…everything is dehydrated, just add hot water, all the prep is done @ HQ, very low overhead.

Trust me, they’re making money.

It’s probably zebu or something.

it’s very thin and not the best quality. and they buy it in vast quanities.

and i think it’s squirrel meat…

This may be old news, but:
if you read Fast Food Nation, you may remember the alarming fact that the USDept of Agriculture doesn’t hire enough inspectors to inspect all the slaughterhouses, and that’s why we sometimes have outbreaks of e.coli (for example).
That being the case, McDonald’s, wanting to avoid the terrible publicity inherent in transmitting deadly diseases to its customers, as Jack-in-the-Box was, began sending their own inspectors to the meatpackers they were doing business with. Thus it’s pretty safe to eat a Big Mac.
I’m guessing Taco Bell skips that step.

I find it very interesting that all of us can figure out how Taco Bell makes all that money.

Maybe we should start a business.

it just aint steak bro.

Okay. You know how the USDA has grades of beef? Like Grade A, Grade B, etc.?

Once I got some taco bell boxes for moving, and the grade was “fit for human consumption.” As in, “Well, yeah, I guess people can eat it. It shouldn’t kill them.”

When people think of “steak,” they think of a nice T-bone on the grill or a Sirloin under the broiler, but the chopped stuff that fast food places serve isn’t that. They call it “steak” for marketing purposes, and people believe it because they want to. In other words, it’s beef with hype.

Enjoy! :)

Great info, laureth!!

@charliecompany34 – It is steak. The definition of “steak” is literally “A cut of meat, typically beef, usually cut thick and across the muscle grain”

The word steak has come to imply quality, because people associate steak with restaurants. But the word itself doesn’t really mean much. “A cut of meat” is pretty vague, so you can pretty easily call the stuff Taco Bell serves “steak” and be telling the truth.

They are simply taking advantage of people’s assumptions.