Need an easy homerun? Then try All-You-Can-Eat Taco Bell Club. Whether you are trying to start a new club, need an easy event, or just a break from the usual stuff, this is a fun one.
In a nutshell, I’ve found over lots of years that if you call a Taco Bell a little in advance and talk to the manager they will say yes to you having this event and give you one free soda for everyone that comes (sometimes they gave me an additional 10% off, but usually not). We only do hard tacos, soft tacos, and bean burritos. Here is how it works:
1. Get the word out. Here is a flyer we used and here it is in PowerPoint which can be edited and moved to other programs.
2. Show up early and connect with the manager you talked to, have them start a tab on one of their extra registers and keep it open for the entire event. If they don’t have an extra register ask if they will just keep a tab. The idea is to just have you pay the entire bill at the end for everyone. Give them your credit card if they are worried.
3. Get the free small soda cups for the people who show up.
4. Fifteen minutes before the event pre-order a starter number (ex: 25 hard / 25 soft / 10 bean burritos).
5. When kids arrive collect their money and use a sharpie to write “YL” on their hand so you know they paid. I used to charge $3 but ended up decently short and then moved to $4 and usually end up pretty close to breaking even.
6. I tell Taco Bell only to take orders from one person, a leader, then this person keeps an eye on the pace and keeps ordering more, usually a lot more hard and soft tacos and only a few bean burritos as they don’t eat as many of those. If more than one person does this, then it can get confusing and you might end up with redundant orders.
7. I take lots of pictures and post them on social media, we hang out, challenge a few kids to “break the YL record”, etc… just some good all around good YL fun.
We’ve also done a full out club in Taco Bell, complete with songs, skit, club talk (here are some other posts here and here)… but I’ve found this is better used as a fun event and easy to get new kids to come. You need to be prepared to lose a little money, but the most I’ve lost is about $40 and it was well worth it.
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3 thoughts on “How to Do an All-You-Can-Eat Taco Bell Club”
Sean,
Great idea… our team was tossing it around… about how many kids do you have show up at this event? Have you guys landed on just using it as a social gather (instead of Club)? Any other “Wins” you can suggest for the night? Or we’d love to try ______ in the future at our Taco Bell night?
Thanks,
Kyle, great questions. For us it is better as a hang out, though it was fun to do a club there too. At minimum we do pull everyone together and give announcements and maybe a 60 second “this is what YL is”… In which I usually mention food, fun, friends and hearing about life from the leaders who are Christians. Numbers totally vary, for us and other clubs in our area 25-100 people. Promoting it early and egging kids on to eat a ton is really fun. Hope that helps!
We used to something like this weekly but at a local Del Taco. Usually became the first step for kids into youth group (church setting here). If you have a Del Taco near you, they usually have a Taco Tuesday deal – 3 soft or hard tacos for .99. It was awesome! Usually, would cost about $60-80 per night for about 40-50 kids that cam consistently. We didn’t charge them anything but if they wanted a drink, dessert, etc they had to pay for it. I’d still be doing this if there was a Del Taco in my current ministry location. I think I’ll try this Taco Bell version and see how it goes tho.