I don't know if anyone here remembers US Taco Co a few years back, but basically it was a Taco Bell owned spinoff foray into fast-casual dining. They were only open for like a year before they suddenly closed down.

With the landscape of the fast food industry changing and being hit hard by fast casual and locally owned businesses, especially from millenials, I wonder if the endgame here is to try to turn most of its suburban restaurants into Taco Bell Cantinas (see: https://www.tacobell.com/news/fast-social-restaurants). This means they would be shifting the focus away from fast food entirely by trying to stay afloat by competing directly against the likes of Chipotle and the like by stripping their menu down but producing higher quality food.

Their read on the landscape might be that they believe the company won't survive in 20 years from now if they don't change their model to offer simplified items at higher quality and offering a cozier, more "adult" dine-in experience.

This is all entirely speculation but I had this discussion with someone else here and it got me thinking that this might actually be what TB is hoping to achieve, and they are going to start heading in that direction by 1. stripping the menu down and 2. experimenting with suburban Taco Bell Cantinas to see if the Cantina-style experience is the future of the restaurant.