Dan Ryckert's Taco Bell Taste Challenge Data Analysis

Hey folks, I put together a small analysis of Dan's Taco Bell taste test. You can check out the PDF doc here with some breakdowns of scores and cost. My biggest takeaway is that the data suggests that Dan's score has no relation to the price of the item. This means he would be just as happy eating the lowest price items as he would if he bought only the premium items.

Update: New charts normalized by price with added scattershot chart.

So he finally tried sour cream and like it huh? Maybe he should start questioning his own prejudices, since they've been proven wrong time and time again? Nahhhhh why start now?

Well done duder, well done.

I expected this to happen but I am nonetheless impressed by someone actually taking the time and effort to make it.

You really made it look good as well. A+ on the presentation. It's good to see the expected downward trend in ratings as he got closer to the end in graph form.

+ @danryckert

(+ @alex)

Haha nice, the lowest was a 76! I shouldn't be surprised, I haven't had taco bell in probably a decade, it was pretty good from what I remembered especially when you open it up to squeeze the hot sauce in it. *shrug* Maybe I should try it again... goddamnit...

Bar graphs! Love it!

I had a xxl grilled stuffed burrito recently and was disappointed. Might have just been whoever made it, but I prefer crunchwraps/quesoritos.

Hmmm, looks like the game reviewer's official 7 to 10 rating scale carries over to rating food as well...

Haha, really nice job dude :D

Brilliant!

danryckert_tacobell.pdf

As soon as I saw the stream, I wanted to make a whole website (DansTacoBellReviews.com is still available people)... create some graphics, and then add each review to the website. I then realized that I don't have that kind of time anymore....

but I'm glad some crazy/dumb stuff came out of the reviews.

Nice work on the graphs. I'm in class right now so I can't do it, but someone should calculate Dan's utility (rating) per dollar for each item.

A+ presentation there. Looks professional. Good work.

Oh one thing I was wondering, what was the order eaten to rating? Did he dislike things in general more after eating so much?

Taco Bell must be paying Dan to inflate the scores. These are terrible reviews because they aren't objective enough.

This would be another cool comparison.

@rongalaxy: Used to be better when it was just the regular-ass Grilled Stufft Burrito. The XXL is, weirdly, a sub-par imitation.

I stuck this in Excel to calculate the Happiness per Dollar. No surprise the Spicy Potato Soft Taco is the real winner here with the Triple Layer Nacho coming second. I tried adjusting for cost (to mitigate the negative effect money spent over the average has on H/D) but the SPST is still number one and the Chicken XXL Grilled Stuffed Burrito is last. If I get some time, what I'm really interested in is what is the maximum H/D achievable if Dan was forced to eat only one of these items for the rest of his life...that is, what maximizes H/D when you have to purchase enough to sustain a 2000 calorie per day diet.

Edit: A major breakthrough...I've also adjusted the rating scale as well to further differentiate ratings, and the Chicken XXL GSB jumps to the middle of the pack. SPST remains at the top. I have work I'm supposed to be doing and instead I'm thinking about Dan's taco ratings. Clearly I have a problem.

Whats the score:cheese ratio? I bet the higher the cheese, the higher the score cause hes a monster.

I actually half-expected you to have sorted by ingredients contained in each item and then charted average, like, average happiness per item with and without each food ingredient (i.e. average of all items containing cheese was 94, average of all items not containing cheese was 83, average of all items containing beef was 88, average of all items not containing beef was 86, etc.)

Maybe something to shoot for you if you want to spend even more time on a dumb (great) idea

The problem with the XXL Grilled Stuffed Burrito is that it's still Taco Bell.

More bewildering than Dan eating all this Taco Bell is peoples weird attitude like Taco Bell is this horrible garbage that no one in their right mind should consume. It's just fast food, no better or worse than any other fast food out there. The apprehension towards it from some folks is way weirder than Dan's love for it.

Did this come from a video that I haven't seen?

@devil240z: He was live on Periscope at the weekend.

@strikealight: I follow GBU so idk how I missed it... its not there!

Guys, GUYS, we're that much closer to Dan admitting that aioli is mayo and finally trying to mayonnaise. This is our history!

@devil240z: Someone on a different GBU video said it got taken down for copyright violation.

@monkeyman04: that seems insane. What could the reason possibly be?

@devil240z: I don't know. I'm with you, I missed it live and I missed it on GBU.

Wait hang on, is there NO PRODUCT at Taco Bell that uses some kind of mayonnaise base?

Great job putting all this data together. However this list is lacking the almighty Crunch Wrap Supreme so I question the validity of Dan's Taco Bell analysis.

There are review scores on those graphs? I only see in stars.

Man Dan really loves Taco Bell to the point where the lowest scoring item has a score at 76. Thank you though for making those graphs and grids. I noticed some items were missing, like the Crunchwraps and the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Guess Dan's Taco Bell was out of those I guess, because I haven't seen the periscope yet.

I really wish I could love Taco Bell as much as Dan because it's the closest place to me and the only one open after 11 PM.

He should do gas station deli food next. Like whatever the equivalent of WaWa's is in CA.

He went in and literally said "I would like to order one of every item on the Taco Bell menu," so that's on the workers in that Taco Bell I guess

@ajamafalous: That Taco Bell is an invalid Taco Bell then. I don't even eat much fast food but that item is the only reason I go to Taco Bell. Ah well.

We don't really have much of that, especially in more populated areas. Most gas stations and convenience stores around here will have a couple of prepackaged sandwiches and maybe a small salad, or some burritos that you can toss in the disgusting on-site microwave. Then of course we have stuff like 7-11 stores that have more or less the same shitty food everywhere, like hot dogs, taquitos, and "pizza." You start seeing more "real" gas station food and gas stations with attached convenience stores that have actual fast food restaurants built inside of them once you get out into the middle of nowhere, like out in Central California at truck stops or on the way down to Los Angeles. Around here in San Francisco that type of thing is virtually unheard of. Sometimes you might see a small Subway or a Jack in the Box sharing the same building as a convenience store or something like that, but that's about it.

The thing about San Francisco is most people have to go out of their way to skip over numerous good local restaurants, tacquerias, delis, and pizza joints in order to get to any kind of fast food restaurant. Usually you have to actively avoid sometimes dozens of good places in order to get to places that serve dog shit, like Taco Bell.

This is so official-looking I started laughing out loud when it loaded. Fantastic stuff, thank you for putting this together. I was actually curious about how he'd rank this stuff bc after a 24 hour Taco Bell opened in my hometown and my bus between home and college now goes to a station with a Taco Bell, it's the only fast food I regularly crave. As polarized as Dan's opinions are bound to be, I'm curious!

Not curious enough to watch the actual periscope video though.

(Also seconding my disappointment that the crunch wrap supreme is absent. That thing is my biggest fast food weakness.)

@mike: Makes sense; I keep forgetting you all are in SF. Too used to the suburban sprawl I live in.

"The thing about San Francisco is most people have to go out of their way to skip over numerous good local restaurants, tacquerias, delis, and pizza joints in order to get to any kind of fast food restaurant. Usually you have to actively avoid sometimes dozens of good places in order to get to places that serve dog shit, like Taco Bell."

This is sooo true. SF is a mecca of restaurants and bars. Many are ridiculously great. And it makes Dan's choices even more funny.

Tried that new grilled stuffed steak thing lately and it was just plain bad. And I like the basic stuff at Taco Bell to be fair. It's a 'fill a hole' place like most fast food joints, nothing more or less. Inexpensive on the whole though for what that's worth, and it's worth a lot for some tbh.

EDIT: And on another note that maybe someone here(that calls SF home)may care about. The GS Warriors won again tonight on the road in Indiana, by 8. Clay scored 39, Curry took the night off apparently. 23-0.

I still feel like the numbers are a bit skewed by the fact that he started with the Mexican pizza and gave it a 90. On the other hand, he did still do right by the spicy potato soft taco with a solid 94, so all is good.

Keep in mind that the price per item is also representative of its size, making apples-to-apples price/score comparisons a bit suspect. Clearly we need to calculate the price per food calorie of each item, and let the graph tell us the Best Taco Bell Item of All TIme.

@mike: Way off topic here, but the size of AM/PMs in the Barstow/Bakersfield areas cracked me up. One of 'em has a wall of candy you scoop into containers. A wall! Or did, anyways.

OP, great job. I look forward to Dan doing this for other fast food joints if it's in the cards.

I think the problem with the XXL GSB (GameSpotBomb?!) is that there are just more (as in, amount of each) ingredients on it to the point of being disproportionate. I like guacamole and all, but holy fuck damn that is too much guacamole.

Is there an archive of the Periscope?

You're right! So to truly get a Definitive Verdict, Dan will need to do this again in a different order.

Glad to see the Spicy Potato Taco got such a high rating! They take what is probably the worst part of taco bell (the meat) and replace it with a flavorful lill' carbohydrate.

The Cheesy Gordita Crunch is the best thing Taco Bell makes, especially if you sub in the Doritos Locos Cool Ranch taco shell, which somehow makes it cheaper for reasons I'll never understand but will never complain about. Other quality items that are missing are the Beefy 5-layer Burrito, the Quesarito, and the Beefy Nacho Griller, all of which are good.

Spot on, both of you. The old-school GSB was amazing, whereas the new one is an expensive and somewhat-gross tube of guacamole I always seem to wish I hadn't eaten. If I'm going grilled at Taco Bell, the Beefy Nacho Griller is where I'm headed.

Other Taco Bell notes:

- I disagree highly on Dan's low score of the smothered burrito. It's the closest thing we've got to the glorious Enchirito of days past, and therefore deserves nostalgia points, on top of being a ridiculously filling and fairly tasty item.

- I believe I've actually had everything on the Taco Bell menu with the exception of the chicken variants (though not in one sitting like this), and IMO, the Burrito Supreme is the worst thing Taco Bell makes. Most everything else is somewhere between pretty alright and fantastic.

-This list made me go get Taco Bell for lunch today. I regret nothing.

Does his taco bell not have the Beefy 5 layer burrito? or the 7 layer burrito?

i should have tried that thing that was a giant nacho.