Why Taco Bell thinks it can get just as big as McDonald's

Taco Bell believes it can add another 6,000 units in the U.S. | Photo: Shutterstock.Taco Bell wants to get bigger in the U.S. And it has a goal: McDonald’s.The Mexican fast-food chain, the fourth-largest brand in the U.S. according to Restaurant Business sister company Technomic, believes it can grow domestically through unit development and building in-store sales. In both cases, it is looking to the largest chain in the U.S. as its gold standard. “We think there’s going to be thousands more Taco Bells in the U.S.,” Chris Turner, CFO of Taco Bell parent company Yum Brands, told the Bank of America and NYSE European Investor Conference on Tuesday, according to a transcript on the financial services site Sentieo/AlphaSense. “If you look at one of our leading competitors in the U.S., they’ve got 13,000, 14,000 restaurants,” he added. (McDonald’s operates 13,400 locations domestically.) “We’re just a little over half that. There’s no reason we can’t have the same number of restaurants in...