A Long Way From Mexico: Company Bets China Has an Appetite for Taco Bell

SHANGHAI — Until he was appointed manager of a Taco Bell in China, Will Cao had never seen a taco before. When confronted with its hard, U-shaped shell in Los Angeles last June, he wondered: How do you eat it?

“Everything was spilling all over the place,” said Mr. Cao, a 31-year-old Shanghai resident. “Then I looked at the other customers to learn that, actually, you are supposed to tilt your neck to eat it.”

Mr. Cao’s employer is betting that other Chinese diners will figure it out. Yum China, the company behind KFC there, last month opened the first Taco Bell in China in years, and says it plans to open an unspecified number more. The company is turning to double-layered tacos and overstuffed quesadillas in hopes of regaining ground in a market where its fried chicken has shown the limits of its appeal.

It won’t be easy. First, there is the matter of what’s on the menu: Mexican food. Tacos and burritos are virtually unknown in China, where many diners prize aspirational noshes from America, Japan and Europe and look skeptically at what they see as poorer fare from other developing countries.

Then there is Taco Bell’s very American take on Mexican meals. Even among fans, many of its more artery-hardening menu items are best considered late-night guilty pleasures. “It’s like a dirty thing that I love Taco Bell so much,” the actress Anna Kendrick once said on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, adding, “it has to be under cover of darkness in my car.”