Taco Bell are building a billboard that dispenses nacho cheese

As a rule, sauces dispensed from somewhere other than a licensed restaurant are best left well alone. As tempting as mystery ketchup may well be, you can’t always trust a condiment by its cover. You don’t know where it’s been. However, it’s also worth remembering that there are some offers that are just too good to ignore. Rules are made to be broken, as they say.

The latest test of will power comes from the American fast food giant, Taco Bell. As part of a new campaign to tempt Canadians to try their strange brand of greasy Tex Mex, the franchise have unveiled plans for a brand new billboard to be erected slap bang in the centre of Toronto. This, however, will be no ordinary billboard. Beyond the brightly lit, digitally altered images of beefy tacos, passers by will be to coat themselves and their snacks in the chain’s signature nacho cheese, spurted straight from the advert.

As unnerving as this new approach to fast food promotion might sound, it has been given the overt blessing of those in control at Taco Bell HQ. As part of a specially planned press release, Veronica Castillo, head of marketing at Taco Bell Canada, said, “Kicking off the year with a nacho cheese-dispensing billboard means that 2019 will be as crazy as ever for us.” She also added, “our fans know it’s impossible to deny the appeal of warm, gooey, zesty nacho cheese, and we couldn’t agree more.” There was no comment on whether they might change their mind when they realise where it comes from.

There seem to be surprisingly few limitations on what customers can and can’t bring to be drenched in cheese. In fact, Taco Bell are actively encouraging participants to think outside the box for sauce receptacles, in an attempt to prove that their sauce really can pair with anything. For anyone who doesn’t happen to carry around a ready supply of snacks, there will even be representatives ready to hand out samples of the chain’s new “Nacho Cheese Naked Chicken Chalupa”.  

Anyone not put off by the prospect of raising their snacks towards a mysterious cheese hose will have to move quickly in order to take advantage of the new offer. The board will only be open on one day, January 19th, from 1130 to 230, directly next to the Taco Bell at 482 Queen Street W in Toronto. Presumably, the big cheeses at the top of the Taco tree weren’t sure whether more locations where quite ready for a yellow goo fountain.

In most situations, too much cheese is a contradiction in terms. However, whichever way you try to spin it, there’s no denying that a cheese dispensing billboard is an inherently horrible idea. You have to ask how low we may have fallen when we’re prepared to flock to a distinctly average fast food joint to share a nacho reservoir. Time will tell, but we suggest that this will be one of those ideas that’s acceptable in theory, but nightmarish in practise.