This Is What You'd Pay For A Taco Bell Taco In The 1960s

If you go to any given Taco Bell location, you will be met with a menu packed with options. But one of the tastiest and most affordable of the chain's menu remains the crunchy tacos at $1.79 a pop. (Current prices may be slightly different depending on locations). But today's price is a far cry from 1965, when the tacos were sold for just 19 cents each.

Taco Bell's crunchy taco is a no-frills snack, consisting of seasoned ground beef, shredded cheddar cheese, and shredded iceberg lettuce in a crunchy corn taco shell. While the recipe appears to be exactly as it was in the mid-1960s, the price tag isn't. A 1965 photo of Kermit Becky, the company's first franchisee, shows him posing underneath his location's menu, which listed just six food choices (including a taco) all priced at 19 cents. When adjusted for inflation, that's about $1.97 in today's monetary value (as of August 2025). So, really, at $1.79, the current crunchy taco price should still be considered an absolute steal.

In the mid-1960s, a dollar went a long way at Taco Bell. If you had $1.14 in your pocket, you could buy the entirety of Taco Bell's food menu (without tax, of course). So what else rounded out Taco Bell's original menu lineup?

Other than the taco, the early fast food restaurant offered frijoles, burritos, tostadas, and a chili burger. Although it's difficult to find an original Taco Bell menu with descriptions, one from the early 1970s described the frijoles as smooth refried pinto beans served with red chili sauce and cheese. While frijoles are no longer listed on the chain's menu, Taco Bell does offer a similar dish, Pintos n Cheese, for $2.99.

Burritos were listed twice on the original menu because customers could opt for the dish with either red or green sauce. Both versions had refried beans, cheese, and onions wrapped in a flour tortilla. Taco Bell's current bean burrito appears to be pretty similar, though it now only comes with red sauce and is priced at $2.49.

Tostadas were made by topping a flat, fried corn tortilla with refried beans, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese, and Taco Bell sauce. The company brought the dish back (along with the green sauce burrito) when it introduced its "Decades" menu in 2024. Representing the 1960s, the Tostada was priced at $2.19, roughly $2.00 more than the original. 

Finally, Taco Bell in its earliest days offered a Chili Burger (which was later renamed the Bellburger). It featured a ground beef patty with lettuce, onions, and Taco Bell sauce on a soft bun. The burger quietly disappeared by the mid-1990s and has yet to make a return to the Taco Bell menu.