June 30, 2025 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Managing Editor, Networld Media Group
Taco John’s is innovating its menu under the leadership of corporate chef Brad Bergaus to attract new consumers while re-imagining classic dishes with a focus on fresh, quality ingredients and complex flavors.
With mounting pressure from fast casuals and rising costs causing consumers to rethink their dining plans, QSRs are struggling like never before. Taco John’s, a West-Mex brand, is leading the charge in bringing new ideas and flavors to life. The man behind that task is Brad Bergaus, corporate chef and director of menu innovation for Taco John’s, who alongside Sara Scroggins, director of brand marketing, and Kevin Flaherty, chief marketing officer, are reinventing classics, designing LTOs and bringing to life regional flavor profiles and emerging consumer trends.
QSRweb talked to Bergaus in a phone interview to learn how Taco John’s is stepping outside the box and working to re-invent the QSR wheel.
Bergaus said Taco John’s takes pride in its fresh quality and the hearty simplicity of Western cuisine and igniting it with Mexican-inspired spices and chilies. The brand’s Fiesta Menu is one example, where grilled white meat chicken is paired with Taco John’s signature four-cheese blend, guacamole, house-made pico de gallo and its proprietary fiesta sauce.
“This Fiesta Sauce, think of it as if you go to a sports bar and you get waffle fries as a side dish, and it always comes with a beautiful side of seasoned sour cream,” Bergaus said. “We’ve taken that and kind of amplified it, adding jalapenos in it, adding cayenne, adding in garlic and onion and cumin to really bring out those Mexican flavors within a Western-inspired dip.”
Quality
Bergaus said quality is the next trait that Taco John’s is leaning into. Making improved pico de gallo with fresh cilantro, lime and jalapeno is just one step toward better quality.
“We’ve been around 56 years,” he said. “We’re going to bring some of those nostalgic flavors that we had in the past to life for our current consumer and for those young consumers coming into our brand.”
Gen Z and Gen Alpha take social media seriously and look for quality as well as visual appeal they can sport on TikTok and Instagram. Bergaus said making sure Taco John’s flavors mesh well together is another trait the brand seeks in its food. For instance, making sure the brand’s signature taco sauce pairs well with its super hot sauce on, say, a bean burrito with the super hot sauce’s vibrancy and the decadent tomato flavor of a taco sauce gives flexibility to the consumer.
“They can try our Fiesta Sauce on something,” Bergaus said. “They can try our tri-tip sirloin steak on something. We have what we know and our consumer love, but we don’t limit it to that.”
Flavor
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are already influencing QSR flavors, and that will eventually have an impact on the industry.
“The fresh quality cues that we can offer that our competitors possibly do not offer, and how we can deliver that to the Gen Z consumer, they’re also looking for cleaner ingredient decks,” Bergaus said. “That’s one area that we’re focusing on: ensuring that artificial colors are out of the mix, preservatives are out of the mix. For us, it’s kind of driving spice.”
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are seeking levels of heat that are well rounded and not seen in the industry before. “There are some that want the aspect of that punch in the mouth, per se, while that drives heat,” Bergaus added. “But, if you can get something that has a lot of heat that is rounded within the mouthfeel and the overall experience that kind of completes the dish, that’s the harmonious perfection of delivering that to Gen Z.”
Today’s consumers seek heat with flavor, not just heat for heat’s sake.
R&D
“How we look at it from the innovation side of the things here is what’s our baseline? What are we working from from the pantry,” Bergaus said, “and how can we cross utilize as much as we can with what we have, but then also looking at other avenues of ‘Is it a new sauce that we need to bring in? And what are the layers of complexity of this sauce? Is it a shelf-stable sauce? Is it a refrigerated sauce? How easily is it applied to the builds in terms of viscosity?’ Taking one or two of those new skus or even cross utilizing our pantry skus and builds and working with our ops team and, as we call it, kind of barrel testing.”
Bergaus and his team will create the “gold standard” of a dish in the R&D kitchen and then will partner with the operations team to build out a dish 20 or 30 times in a time-motion study. The team will try to replicate what building out a dish on the line would look like, especially when team members are “in the weeds,” Bergaus said, “when it’s 12 or 12:30 in the afternoon and the drive-thru line is 15 or 20 cars deep. How well can this be executed with that amount of pressure being applied.”
Speed of service and menu assembly time are crucial for replicating a dish in a QSR setting, ensuring Taco John’s is well within its average time or better. Bergaus admitted that can be challenging – a taco is going to be built faster than a burrito, and a burrito might go better than a quesadilla because there’s a grilling aspect to a quesadilla.
Consistency and portioning are also critical to a dish’s success. Different builds require different ingredients and inconsistent portioning can also be a challenge. Kitchen staff keep getting younger and younger and training is paramount to a dish’s success.
From conception to menu it takes about 10 to 12 months for a dish to come to fruition.
When it comes to limited-time-only offerings, a dish goes from ideation to concept testing with the brand’s internal database, to testing on-site with consumers in the brand’s testing site outside of Minneapolis. Once it hits the menu, it drives sales and trends and encourages consumers to visit Taco John’s.
“We’d love to see if they’d come back within that certain time frame two or three times because their first experience was so great with the product,” Bergaus said. “We love to innovate but having that consumer lens when we innovate really helps us in how we turn innovation around.”
Reimaging the classics
Taco John’s is known for taking its staple menu ideas and dressing them up to make dishes more modern. Bergaus said they take the top 10 menu items and examine them to see how flexible the dishes are to add twists. Earlier this year the brand took its Taco Bravo, a classic crispy taco wrapped in a flour tortilla with refried beans in between the shells, and added a layer of nacho cheese.
“Our nacho cheese is kind the liquid gold for the brand and tying it into something that has been on the menu for years on end, people want nostalgia,” Bergaus said. “Nostalgia really brings a layer of feeling that evokes a lot of emotion when you eat products and how can we do that with our menu that we’ve had for a very long time and items that have been around and bring a layer that will drive in the younger consumer? Bring some heat to it.”
Taco John’s like to bring back that was on the menu 15 years ago and revitalize it in an LTO format and gauge the wants of the consumer who ate at Taco John’s 15 or 20 years ago. Do they still enjoy those nostalgic flavors?
The R&D team works closely with the ops teams and the brand’s suppliers to expect the flavors of the future. Bergaus said understanding Taco John’s consumer is paramount to staying ahead of the trends and not simply following other QSRs.
For now, Taco Johns’ focuses on “being who we are and how we’re going to drive or impact flavors by leading Taco John’s today to Taco John’s tomorrow,” Bergaus said. “And we may tie in bits and pieces of what those trendy items are that are one to two years out. If they don’t work with our menu today, they’re not going to work with our consumer in the future.”