<p>Two months into the Major League Baseball season, and thousands of fans have cheered on the back-to-back world champion Dodgers, who have started the season with a winning record. A good number of those fans have also eaten at the ballpark, some at the first Habit Burger & Grill inside a professional sports venue.</p>
<p>This center field location is built for speed, fashioned with an updated layout and stocked with new equipment and technology to accommodate the fast-paced output that baseball fans have come to expect – as stadium restaurants serve about 700 meals in the hour before, and the hour after, the first pitch.</p>
<p>It’s somewhat of a departure from what Habit is known for – open kitchens and “laidback, feel-good vibes.” But the team has met the demand without sacrificing Habit’s spirit.</p>
<p>"Serving fresh, cooked-to-order food at stadium speed is no easy feat,” said Habit Director of Brand Marketing Jack Lettenmair. “We thrive when solving challenges like that at Habit. We're the smallest brand in Yum!’s portfolio, but what we lack in size, we make up for with speed and determination.”</p>
<p>Here’s how Habit creatively built its operations for speed while remaining “fresh like that.”</p>
<p><img src="/wps/wcm/connect/yumbrands/e3da0880-1649-4696-87fb-8bdab36946c1/1/IMG_8070_Cropped.jpg?MOD=AJPERES" alt="" title="" style="width: 437px; height: 421px; margin: 0px auto; display: block;" /></p>
<p><strong>From food trucks to center field</strong></p>
<p>As Lettenmair tells it, Dodgers executives reached out to Habit in August 2025.</p>
<p>“They were interested in having another partner that was rooted in Southern California, with a national presence, but really, they wanted a brand that shared their California spirit,” he said.</p>
<p>That conversation kicked off a series of meetings over the next few months. Marketing brought in finance, who tapped legal, who connected with operations – all culminating around game one of the playoffs.</p>
<p>“I ran into Jack in the hall, and he asked me to come to a Dodgers playoff game to look at one of the stadium kitchens,” Habit Senior Director of Operations & Guest Experience Jamesa Willis remembered. “That’s how I learned about it. Jack said, ‘We have an opportunity to take over a space; let’s go.’ It was very exciting.”</p>
<p>For Habit, the California-born and -based brand and its offerings had just swept USA Today 10BEST's Readers' Choice Awards across multiple categories, including Best Fast Casual Restaurant, so “there was so much synergy in terms of those California roots and then that winning spirit,” Lettenmair said.</p>
<p>The day of the World Series championship parade, the sponsorship contract was signed. Later, Habit PR team made a public announcement that the brand was moving into Dodger Stadium, posting a photo of moving boxes to its social channels – and the clock was ticking for Willis and her operations team to solve for how they’d deliver 700 meals in two hours while adhering to Habit’s freshly cooked-to-order standards. They had less than five months until Opening Day.</p>
<p>“I was confident we could do it,” Willis said. “We hold thousands of events a year with 17 food trucks. We’ve served 22,000 people at Disneyland in 24 hours, so we know how to do this. We just have to think differently.”</p>
<p>And they did. Willis’ team held daily meetings on the project, redesigning a space to fit Habit’s aesthetic and brand. They added two cook and prep lines instead of one, opted for a bigger charbroiler, tested toasters that sped up bread toasting by two minutes and installed new milkshake machines that eliminated one step from the process as well as fryers that automatically lifted when finished cooking.</p>
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<p>“I initially went in with a vision for it, and I’ve been back four times with different people from my team who have changed that entirely,” Willis said. “I think being open-minded and bringing people along for the ride is important.”</p>
<p>By Opening Day, the Habit ops team did it, training team members to synergize with the space and serve 400 shakes and 700 burgers in a two-hour span. Plus, Willis adds, the brand is now testing some of this new equipment in its traditional restaurants to speed up its operations outside the ballpark, including Habit’s newest location, aptly called “Dodgers x Habit Home Base,” just minutes from the stadium on Sunset Blvd.</p>
<p>The Dodgers-themed restaurant includes bold blue lighting, refreshed Dodger-blue upholstery, vintage Dodgers-inspired photography and a mural from acclaimed Los Angeles street artist Ali Gonzalez, which serves as a striking visual tribute to the spirit of L.A., Dodgers culture and the community that brings it all together. </p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><img src="/wps/wcm/connect/yumbrands/e3da0880-1649-4696-87fb-8bdab36946c1/3/1774546605065.jpg?MOD=AJPERES" alt="" width="273" height="364" title="" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>What’s better than burgers and baseball?</strong></p>
<p>For Willis, Habit’s partnership with the Dodgers just makes sense. “What’s better than getting a hot burger and fries at a baseball game? It all goes together,” she said.</p>
<p>Burgers, baseball and a little bit of behind-the-scenes hustle.</p>
<p>Now that the kitchen is prepped, Dodgers fans can enjoy America’s favorite pastime and food – served by two back-to-back winning teams.</p>
<p>“It’s the perfect fit,” Lettenmair said.</p>
<p>
Taco Bell’s Brand Narrative team is already planning next year’s Live Más LIVE, and it won’t be a repeat of the celebrity-led variety show that aired on a popular streaming service this spring. While the ingredients of Taco Bell food, celebrities and a mass distribution element (i.e., streaming) will remain mainstays, brand leaders say, <i>how</i> they intersect will shift as the event is designed to change shape each year as Taco Bell pushes to be seen as a broader cultural and entertainment brand.</p>
<p>Live Más LIVE began in 2024 in Las Vegas as a Taco Bell first – a stage show to preview upcoming menu items. In 2025, the program moved to New York City and was hosted by an “Emily in Paris” actor. This spring, it returned to the West Coast, opening in Los Angeles with a well-known rapper as host and appearances by pro athletes, actors and music artists.</p>
<p>“We want Taco Bell to be more of a cultural and entertainment brand than a quick-service restaurant (QSR) brand,” said James Burton, marketing manager. “If we repeated it year after year, it becomes the expected behavior. We could fall pretty quickly back into the QSR playbook.”</p>
<p>A constant across editions is the scale of the menu reveal: Taco Bell announces a full year of limited time offerings (LTOs) at the event, a move executives frame as a competitive advantage.</p>
<p>“This year’s variety show format reflected how we’re moving with culture and meeting consumers where they are," said Taco Bell Global Chief Brand Officer Taylor Montgomery. "If we want to make Taco Bell the most culturally connected brand, we need to continue raising the bar, and this year we did exactly that."</p>
<p><img src="/wps/wcm/connect/yumbrands/11532745-6adf-4330-9146-e5b1023f1c43/1/LML2.jpg?MOD=AJPERES" title="" style="width: 680px; height: 382px; margin: 0px auto; display: block;" /></p>
<p>For the 2026 edition, the Brand Narrative team initially sketched an on-stage comedy that evolved into a celebrity-studded variety show. Marketing Director Sara Singh said the team pushed for a distributor that matched the scale of the production.</p>
<p>Singh said the pitch landed on a popular streaming service after internal leaders made the calls needed to secure a Hollywood-caliber platform.
</p>
<p>“The ambition was: let’s match the energy of what we’re building to where we’re airing it,” Singh said.</p>
<p>The team shifted from an internet livestream to a live-to-tape production, filming March 3 and releasing the hourlong show March 10 (with access through April 9). The format required entertaining the in-room audience while also holding attention online for a week-long rollout.</p>
<p>Taco Bell partnered with production company Den of Thieves, whose credits include the Grammys and MTV Video Music Awards. Singh said the team tightened segments and pared back traditional “reasons to believe” product messaging to keep the show “short, punchy and watchable,” while still landing key menu details.</p>
<p>In editing, the team used a simple test: each segment had to include “fan truth,” “food truth” and “brand truth.” Anything that didn’t hit all three was cut.</p>
<p>One example was “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@filmtvmovieshow/video/7616781620950977823" >Made
or Made Up</a>,” in which participants had to guess if a menu item was concocted from the Taco Bell test kitchen or a fictious invention by AI. The game playfully emphasized the inventiveness of the brand’s food (brand and food truths) that often blurs the line of real versus imaginary and reflects how Taco Bell fans love to talk about the brand’s innovation pipeline (fan truth).</p>
<p>The final cut removed about 30 minutes of material and generated more than 2,000 pieces of traditional and online media coverage, which Burton credits in part to a Taco Bell social-first: a rollout built around “clipping,” 15- to 30-second highlights designed to travel quickly across platforms rather than requiring audiences to commit to the full hour.</p>
<p>Singh said the approach reflects how younger viewers often consume longer content in serialized bursts, with the team packaging key moments to sustain a week of conversation prior to the streaming release.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>At the same time, Taco Bell said the full episode drew viewers on the streaming platform, where Live Más LIVE ranked among the top five most-watched shows in the Talk Category during its premiere week. The in-room talent and guest list also helped pull the campaign into entertainment coverage from outlets such as Entertainment Weekly, People and Us Weekly.</p>
<p>“Every single person here is a real fan,” Singh said, pointing to the event’s live audience as part of the show’s selling point. “The fact that we have the power to bring them together is our brand’s superpower — and you’re going to continue to see that from our team.”</p>
<p>With the 2026 drop in the rearview, Singh said planning for the next Live Más LIVE started immediately. “We’ve got to start thinking about Live Más LIVE 2027,” she recalled being told, adding. “It will be unique from years before.”</p>
