I just found out that Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell, passed away yesterday at 86. This is a sad day.

But Bell lived a long and complete life, and though his family should be in our thoughts, we should not forget all the wonderful, spectacular things he’s done for us. Especially that most wonderful, most spectacular thing: Founding Taco Bell.

So in honor of Mr. Bell’s amazing life and legacy, here’s the entirety of a guest post I made at RakeBlog a while ago, inspired by Glen Bell’s authorized biography, Taco Titan:

In Taco Titan: The Glen Bell Story, Debra Lee Baldwin’s biography of Taco Bell founder Glen Bell, Bell himself grants readers a special treat: His 60 “Recipes for Success.” Leafing through these suggestions, we learn that Bell is not just a great and inspirational soothsayer (little-known fact: Bell briefly launched a barbecue chain called Hickory Bell in 1969, long before the barbecue explosion of this millennium), but a man who practices what he preaches. Here I present to you several of Bell’s recipes, all of which are currently in practice at every Taco Bell restaurant:

#3) An innovative product will set you apart.

Did you know that Glen Bell invented the pre-formed hard taco shell? It’s true. He owned a hamburger stand that happened to be across the street from a tortilla factory, but he realized that tacos — stuffed then deep-fried — were simply too messy for mass production and consumption. So Glen Bell hired some guy to make him a rack out of chicken wire. That way, he could deep-fry, then stuff. Innovation!

#9) Always be on the lookout for a bargain.

Little-known fact: Taco Bell cash registers do not go past $20. It is thought to be impossible to spend more than that on Taco Bell food, no matter how many people you’re with and how much you buy. The price per item drops as you approach $20. Everyone who follows Glen Bell’s Ninth Recipe for Success eats at Taco Bell daily, because there is no better bargain. How people still starve is beyond me. Have they ever even heard of the Big Taste Taco? (Ed. Note: the Big Taste Taco is no longer available.)

#19) Volume is the key to profit.

Duh. Why buy one expensive taco when you can buy 30 cheap ones?

#22) The best ideas are often the most simple.

How’s this for a simple idea: We start with six or seven delicious ingredients. Then we combine them in as many ways as we can possibly imagine. Cheesy Bean and Beef Burritaco! Do it! It’s gold!

#36) Control your growth or it will control you.

If there were a Taco Bell everywhere Taco Bell consumers wanted a Taco Bell, there would be Taco Bells everywhere. All retail space would be occupied by Taco Bell because all matter would be made up of Taco Bell, and the only thought would be Taco Bell because the entire universe, and all of existence, would only be Taco Bell. So yeah, for the sake of life on Earth, it’s probably best that Taco Bell’s growth be controlled. Not for the sake of me getting some goddamned Taco Bell in Brooklyn, though. (Ed. Note: I no longer live in Brooklyn. I now live much closer to Taco Bell, thankfully.)

#37) Challenge employees to recognize problems. Reward employees who generate solutions.

A few years ago, there was a problem at Taco Bell. It was this: Delicious crunchy tacos are really hard to travel with. Sure, those of us with brilliant and benevolent Driver’s Ed teachers were lucky enough to learn the secrets of driving while eating crunchy tacos (hint: play the angles), but it’s a tricky undertaking. So Glen Bell, I assume, challenged his employees to come up with some way to incorporate crunchiness in a portable menu item. Behold: The Double-Decker Taco, the Crunchwrap Supreme, The Cheesy Gordita Crunch, etc. I assume that these problems were both recognized and solved by Taco Bell employees because I know that Taco Bell employees possess the solutions to all the world’s problems.

#58) Money is not a goal in itself but a means to an end.

This is a universal truth. Money is not a goal in itself. Money is only a means with which to purchase tacos.

I saw an ad for the Beefy 5 Layer Burrito during last night’s Jets’ game, so I went out to the Worst Taco Bell in the World in nearby Elmsford, N.Y., today to try it out.

The Beefy 5 Layer Burrito is a burrito filled with refried beans (you know, like in pintos and cheese), taco beef (the standard stuff), nacho cheese (plain old nacho cheese, the stuff that comes with nachos), sour cream (ie Supreme) and shredded cheese (which you may recognize from every Taco Bell product ever).

Wait, hold on. Burrito, beans, ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream, shredded cheese? What is this, 1992? Honestly, when was the last time Taco Bell introduced a new menu item that didn’t involve a Chalupa shell or Gordita flatbread or crispy red strips or Zesty Pepper Jack sauce? Everything in the Beefy 5 Layer Burrito has been on the Taco Bell menu in some capacity since the dawn of time.

In fact, I’m damn near shocked Taco Bell hasn’t rolled out the Beefy 5 Layer Burrito before. It’s basically just all the soft things from Taco Bell’s classic selection of items, so if you’re ever mandated by a dentist to shy away from crunchy or crispy foods, I heartily recommend it.

Other than that, though, it gets a resounding meh. It’s from Taco Bell and it’s loaded up with staples of Taco Bell cuisine, so it is, of course, delicious, but it lacks any sort of distinguishing feature. It’s certainly a lot of good food for 89 cents, and that’s cool. But it’s just a giant heaping mishmash of Taco Bell stuff, and just tastes exactly like anything else you’d get at Taco Bell, only without any crunchiness whatsoever.

Which is awesome, don’t get me wrong. It’s Taco Bell, like I said. But I’ve come to expect more at this point. Like Lava Sauce. Throw some Lava Sauce on that baby and you’d have a seriously awesome burrito for .89 cents. As it is now, it’s merely a tasty but somewhat bland reminder of how far Taco Bell has come since my childhood.

According to the Dow Jones Newswires, Yum Foods, the parent company and bastion of good will responsible for Taco Bell, will expand the test of their latest attempt to bring back the Taco Bell Breakfast Menu.

If you happen to live in the Arizona area, or anyplace where Yum Foods brings Taco Bell breakfast, I urge you: Eat it. Buy as much Taco Bell breakfast as you can afford. We need to make this work, people.

I am barely old enough to remember Taco Bell breakfast in its original incarnation. I can’t have had it more than once or twice. Its memory is nebulous, fleeting, but wonderful. I know I somehow learned at an early age that a breakfast burrito is a fantastic thing, and I think Taco Bell had something to do with that.

Yum Foods has tested Taco Bell breakfast at various times in various markets in recent years, but never in a year and market that both corresponded with my presence. And that sucks.

The Dow Jones Newswire article also informs us that Taco Bell will launch a new campaign similar to Subway’s Jared Fogle bit, only prompting the “Drive-Thru Diet” and heralding Taco Bell’s Fresco Menu, which replaces cheese with pico de gallo and is not recommended by TedQuarters.

Also, it contains this gem:

With a value focus driven by it’s “Why pay more?” menu, Taco Bell has outperformed Yum’s Pizza Hut and KFC chains–which both sell more during the weak dinner-hour period–in the U.S.

So I’ll take that to mean that Taco Bell wildly outperforms Pizza Hut and KFC during the inordinately strong midnight-to-2 a.m. period in the U.S.

That’s just Fourthmeal.

Anyway, support Taco Bell’s effort to reinstate firstmeal.

Also, support my rarely edited Taco Bell Wiki.

Taco Bell has recently been hyping up the triumphant return of the Cheesy Gordita Crunch to its menu boards, but here’s the jig:

The Cheesy Gordita Crunch never really went anywhere.

It may have been off the menu proper, but since all the materials to make a Cheesy Gordita Crunch were present in extant menu items, the gordita-taco hybrid remained in the Taco Bell computer system and could be prepared to order.

The crunchy taco shell, ground beef, lettuce and cheese, of course, are all staples of the Taco Bell menu. The pillowy Gordita flatbread is used for the normal gorditas, the melted three-cheese mix is in the MexiMelt, and the zesty pepper jack sauce is familiar from the Baja line of products.

In fact, as long as an extinct Taco Bell menu item doesn’t include any specialty ingredients — a black taco shell or the spicy Caesar sauce from the long-defunct Chicken Caesar Grilled Stuft Burrito, for example — it’s a safe bet they’ll still make it for you at your local Taco Bell.

Just a secret of the pros.

Why Taco Bell decided to remove the Cheesy Gordita Crunch from the menu in the first place is beyond me. It was an important step between the Double Decker Taco and the Crunchwrap Supreme in the evolution of crunchy Taco Bell products that could also be eaten on the go, as necessitated by the near-impossibility of cleanly eating a standard crunchy taco while driving.

Its return to the menu board should be celebrated, of course, but it must not be the final step in Taco Bell’s pioneering work making new things out of a bunch of other things they already have laying around.

Here’s my idea. Listen up, Taco Bell:

Taco Bell’s fabulous website should create a flash-driven interface wherein users can combine existing Taco Bell ingredients into new and delicious Taco Bell menu items.

It will be like an electronic paper doll of pseudo-Mexican deliciousness.

For example: I might log on to TacoBell.com’s product generator and take the existing Volcano Taco and wrap it in the melted three-cheese blend and a piece of gordita flatbread.

Wham! It’s the Magma Gordita Crunch.

Or maybe I want a chicken Chalupa, only covered in Lava sauce and with some crispy red strips — the ones that debuted in that same Chicken Caesar Grilled Stuft Burrito.

Kapow! The Crispy Caliente Chicken Chalupa.

Lest you think this is just my way of getting more Lava Sauce on stuff, I believe the interface would best be used as part of an interactive contest to drive awareness of Taco Bell’s website.

It would be way, way too much to expect Taco Bell to just reproduce the whims of every capricious Taco Bell diner, not with all Taco Bell has already done for us.

But perhaps visitors to Taco Bell could vote on the most appetizing user-created suggested new menu item, and Taco Bell could reward that user with some sort of Taco Bell-themed prize, plus reward website visitors by creating and selling that popular suggested Taco Bell product.

I fail to see how this could possibly go wrong. All it would really take is Taco Bell tacitly admitting that it gets most of its new products by combining elements of its old ones. That’s just not really a big secret at this point.

The heroic bastions of good will at Taco Bell have announced that this year, instead of the popular “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion from years past, Taco Bell will provide a free Black Jack Taco to every Taco Bell guest on Saturday between 6 p.m. and midnight, while supplies last.

Amazing.

Debate rages over whether Taco Bell is providing free tacos to celebrate Halloween or to celebrate the World Series, or if Taco Bell is just providing free tacos because the restaurant chain is dedicated to ending world hunger, one taco at a time.

The Black Jack Taco, if you were unaware, is like a regular taco, but blacker. It also comes with delicious pepper-jack sauce, familiar to lovers of the now-defunct (but still usually available if you just ask) Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

If you live in the vicinity of multiple Taco Bells, you can probably figure out a way to get several free tacos out of this. In fact, you can probably figure out a way to get several free tacos just by returning to the same Taco Bell in half-hour intervals on Saturday.

But please, don’t take advantage of Taco Bell’s generosity. Taco Bell did this for you. And think of all that Taco Bell has done for you in the past. Repay Taco Bell by purchasing other menu items while you’re there.

I caught wind of the new Black Jack Taco today thanks to the Internet’s own Jake Rake.

I had to try it, but the problem is the Taco Bell nearest my home is the Worst Taco Bell on the Face of the Earth. Bar none. It’s terrible. One time I waited 17 minutes for my tacos. It was still worth it, obviously, but that’s really just inexcusable for Taco Bell.

The other thing they do is serve Volcano Tacos in regular, non-red taco shells. Are you kidding me? That’s just a regular taco with lava sauce on it, my friends. Don’t sell me it as a Volcano Taco, please.

Anyway, the woman at the register looked completely baffled when I ordered a Black Jack Taco. She asked if I meant Double Decker Taco, and I said no, that while the Double Decker Taco is indeed delicious, I was there to sample the new Black Jack Taco. She told me they didn’t have it, so I turned to leave, further disappointed in the World’s Worst Taco Bell.

But the confusion made enough commotion that some manager guy overheard and said, “hold on! It’s downloading now!”

Huh? Downloading?

I take this to mean that some Taco Bell supercomputer contains all of the Taco Bell recipes, and when Taco Bell gets a new menu item, all the local Taco Bell franchises must download them to properly prepare the delicious new menu items.

Because, you know, they can’t just look at the pictures.

Anyway, the main innovation — and only new Taco Bell ingredient — in the Black Jack taco is the black taco shell, which was predictably awesome. I don’t know that it tasted appreciably different than a regular taco shell, of course, but I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.

There was a decent amount of spice in there, and it might have been coming from the shell. Then again, it could have been the Pepper Jack sauce, which you may remember from such Taco Bell menu items as the Baja Gordita or the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It’s amazing, and it’s probably one of the most underrated Taco Bell things.

Anyway, the Black Jack Taco comes with my heartiest of recommendations, mostly because it’s served at Taco Bell. But what I really took out of this day is that there is, somewhere on in the Internet, a database filled with forthcoming Taco Bell recipes. Please, hackers, help me out.

I also appreciate the new direction in Taco Bell products toward a greater variety of shell colors. Now, with the new black, traditional yellow, and volcano red varieties, I can finally create my all-taco tribute to the Belgian flag.