In 1948, a 24 year-old man named Glen Bell opened a hot dog stand in the sleepy town of San Bernardino, California. Business at Bell’s Drive-In was pretty good, so good that in 1952 he sold the stand and built a new, more perfect one based on his experience running the first.
As fate would have it, in 1940 two brothers named Dick and Mac McDonald took over their father’s barbecue joint in Monrovia, California. It had been known as “The Airdrome” because it was located by the airport, but the brothers moved the entire building to San Bernardino, where they renamed it “McDonald’s Famous Barbeque”. In 1948, the brothers sat down and figured out that their most popular items were burgers, fries and shakes. So they shut the place down for a while and streamlined the entire operation around only those items. They reopened the restaurant as “McDonald’s” on December 12, 1948.
The brothers’ new restaurant was incredibly popular, so Bell tinkered with his menu to differentiate his place from McDonald’s. Bell loved Mexican food, and tacos seemed like a natural fit. He tweaked his chili recipe into a taco meat recipe, and tacos were soon the best-selling item on the menu. Bell eventually ditched the dogs and burgers and started a small chain called Taco Tias. He took on a business partner, and when he and the partner clashed over expanding to Los Angeles, Bell sold out and started a new chain called El Tacos. Bell again feuded with his new partners, and in 1962 he sold his share of El Tacos and started a new chain of his own: Taco Bell.
But that isn’t the most amazing thing about Glen Bell. Sure, he probably did more than any single person to make tacos and burritos popular in the United States. And sure, he started one of the largest fast food chains in America, giving his shareholders untold wealth and many a teenager a summer job.
But did you know he was related to Sherlock Holmes, too?