Who Makes Taco Bell's Bottled Hot Sauces Sold At Grocery Stores?

It was, perhaps, not as big a front-page sensation as when Taco Bell claimed to have bought the Liberty Bell back in 1996, but it was still a big deal in 2014 when the TexMex fast food giant released retail versions of its iconic hot sauces for the first time. For all those Bell aficionados who were previously forced to grab sauce packets by greedy handfuls and stash them in their kitchens like spice-fiend squirrels (and, by all that, we mean "us"), the ability to buy Fire Sauce by the bottle was something of a revelation. No more was one required to tear open fiddly packets one after another, fingers slippery with sauce as tacos or burritos grew cold in the process. Heck, you didn't even need to confine the sauces' use to items in tortillas. Soups, salads, grilled meats, and other sauces could all be improved with the take-home version of Taco Bell hot sauce, which was — and still is — made by international food retail giant Kraft Heinz.

A 12-year-old Brand Eating interview trumpeted Kraft's association with Taco Bell's parent company, YUM Brands, and spoke glowingly of a desire to bring the "Live Mas" experience to home cooks. At the time, the hot sauces were joined by a whole array of Taco Bell retail products, including taco seasoning, salsa, and even dessert taco kits. Today, Taco Bell hot sauce still shows up on Kraft Heinz's website, indicating that the partnership is going strong. The sauce's labeling has undergone some changes in the past decade-plus (the flirty sayings first seen on TB packets have been swapped for a plain logo), but many maintain that the sauce is still a gotta-have item.

In the Brand Eating interview, Kraft's Taco Bell Senior Brand Manager, Adam Grablick, commented on the similarity of the Taco Bell retail products to their restaurant counterparts: "We work to match the [fast food] formulas as best we can. Some products are the exact same formula, some are slightly different. Any differences are driven by shelf life requirements, shipping requirements, packaging forms, or how consumers interact with the product at home." Indeed, a look at both the Kraft bottled sauce's nutrition disclosure and the same info from Taco Bell itself reveals that their respective Hot Sauces are not, in fact, identical.

The serving size of a Taco Bell packet is "one packet." It's not easy to find the size of a Taco Bell sauce packet, but we've seen it spitballed at around a quarter ounce, or a smidge over seven grams. The serving size of the bottled sauce is five grams, so direct nutritional comparison comes down to fiddly calculations. Both have zero calories and no fat, carbs, or protein. The packets indicate that they are part of Taco Bell's limited gluten-free menu, while allergen information for the bottles is not available on the Kraft Heinz website. And, indeed, the respective ingredient lists are slightly different for the two sauces, with like ingredients being listed in different orders, indicating different proportions. We found out that Taco Bell includes a strange ingredient in its guacamole via the nutritional table, but there really aren't any surprises in the hot sauces. What we can say, however, is that Kraft Heinz's version is close but not an exact match.