7,791 Taco Bell’s exist globally.
2,966 Chipotle’s exist globally.

Taco Bell, founded in 1962, has for decades been the largest Latin inspired restaurant chain in the world, but Chipotle which launched in 1993 might have a chance at surpassing them.

Looking at this, it’s important to see a timeline of company growth.

704 Chipotle’s existed in 2007.
1,000 stores were reached in 2010.

12 years later, the number has increased about 300%.

1.8 billion was the revenue in 2010.
7.5 billion was the revenue in 2021.

Chipotle in 2010 was making 1.7 million per store.
Today, it’s 2.5 million per store.

This surpasses Taco Bell, where revenue per store is 1.6 million dollars on average.

Which means Taco Bell is still noticeably higher in total store revenue, at 12.5 billion.

Chipotle is currently noticeably smaller in stores, but the revenue gap of 4 billion is something shrinking rapidly.

Taco Bell broke 1,000 locations decades ago and while growth is good per store, it hasn’t moved nearly as fast as Chipotle did.

Taco Bell is now setting a goal of 10,000 stores by 2030, which if revenue averages held, would give them 16 billion in yearly revenue.

Chipotle to surpass that would need to have 6,400 stores, which would be about a 110% increase over today.

Due to higher revenue per store and faster growth, Chipotle has a shot at surpassing Taco Bell, but the better question is about opening opportunities.

Taco Bell and Chipotle are both primarily US businesses, where 80-95% of all stores for both business are US based.

Taco Bell is now more aggressive on going international, which might work looking at the parent company.

Taco Bell is owned by Yum Brands, which owns KFC also.

KFC has 24,000 locations, but despite it being seen as a US brand, only 3,900 are in the US.

China is actually the largest market for KFC with 8,500 locations and they are the biggest US fast food brand in Africa.

This gives Taco Bell a big edge over Chipotle, due to the KFC network already being in place for franchisees, food, real estate and more.

Chipotle could do this, but for locations such as China, India and other parts of the world need to build decades of relationships/permit approvals from scratch.

Still though, Taco Bell has a pretty weak foot internationally.

35 stores in India.
11 in China
0 in Mexico

There’s not really a huge number to brag about, when most international Taco Bell locations are Canada, UK and other nations close in culture to the US.

So who wins?

Looking at everything, Chipotle within about 10-20 years will likely surpass Taco Bell for total revenue, but Taco Bell will for decades surpass Chipotle in total stores.

The real challenge to all this though is who can successfully break into Asia and Africa first, where neither have much awareness of Latin inspired food.

Taco Bell has more of a chance at doing it, but just due to the success of KFC, there’s really no promise of success for Taco Bell there.