Taco Bell’s Quesalupa received support from a source more surprising than actor George Takei: The U.S. dairy industry, looking for new ways to sell milk during record low profit margins.
To sell more milk, Dairy Management Inc., a nonprofit organization created and funded by dairy farms to “help increase sales and demand for dairy products,” partnered with Taco Bell, McDonalds, Dominos and other fast food companies to create or change products to include more milk, the Wall Street Journal reports.
One of the projects developed in partnership with Taco Bell was the Quesalupa, a chalupa with a pepper jack cheese-filled crust and a $5 million marketing budget, which was introduced during the 2016 Super Bowl with an ad featuring Takei.
Dairy Management also worked with McDonalds to exchange margarin for real butter in their breakfast sandwiches, a move that contributed to “a double-digit percentage increase in Egg McMuffin sales,” according to Becca Hary, a spokeswoman for the fast food giant. (RELATED: US Gov’t Buying Enough Cheddar For 67 MILLION Grilled Cheese Sandwiches)
Low dairy prices even led many farmers to dump 43 million gallons of milk so far in 2016 because they can’t sell the milk their cows produce, or can’t find trucks to transport the milk. Dairies dump unsold milk every year, but for the most of the past 16 years of data that the Wall Street Journal analyzed, the amount of spilled milk stayed around 25 million gallons a year.
“Everyone has dumped milk, from Minnesota to New England,” Ken Nobis, head of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, told the Wall Street Journal.
Facing pressure from Congress and dairy co-ops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing around $40 million worth of cheese from the nation’s surplus of cheese, currently just sitting in private warehouses around the country.
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