Taco Bell is reaching straight into the childhood freezer with a new dessert built for anybody who still misses the Choco Taco.
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According to Taco Bell’s official announcement, the chain teamed up with Salt & Straw to launch the new Churro Ice Cream Taco at Taco Bell restaurants nationwide beginning September 1. The $3.99 dessert packs creamy churro ice cream inside a crispy waffle cone shell, then finishes it with puffed rice and a dark chocolate-flavored coating. Taco Bell’s current website describes the in-store release as a 48-hour drop, making this one of those situations where waiting around could mean missing it completely.
There is also a drinkable version of the nostalgia. Per Taco Bell’s newsroom, participating Live Más Café locations in California, Las Vegas, Houston, and Dallas are serving the Salt & Straw Choco-Waffle Chiller starting at $4.69. It blends vanilla ice cream with churro crumbles and waffle cone pieces, then adds whipped cream and more cone pieces inside a crackable chocolatey shell.
The new ice cream taco may feel like a social media-era creation, but this dessert format has been outside for more than four decades.
According to Eater’s detailed history of the Choco Taco, Alan Drazen invented the original treat in Philadelphia in 1983 while working in management at Jack & Jill Ice Cream. Drazen had previously driven a Good Humor truck before moving into the business side of mobile ice cream sales. With Mexican food rapidly gaining mainstream popularity in the United States, he saw the taco shape as something consumers would instantly recognize and turned that silhouette into dessert.
The formula was simple but low-key genius. Ice cream went inside a folded waffle cone shell, while chocolate helped hold the experience together and gave customers ice cream, cone, chocolate, and toppings throughout the bite instead of saving the best part for the top of a traditional cone. The Choco Taco first found its audience through ice cream trucks before becoming a much bigger national brand.
Taco Bell was actually part of that growth long before the current Salt & Straw era. Drazen initially convinced independently owned Taco Bell franchise locations to carry the Choco Taco before the idea eventually reached Taco Bell corporate and expanded through the chain. The partnership helped make the frozen taco feel like it belonged in fast food culture as much as it belonged on an ice cream truck.
That relationship resurfaced in February 2022. According to Taco Bell’s announcement at the time, the company reunited with Klondike to test the Choco Taco at 20 restaurants in Los Angeles and Milwaukee after the dessert had been absent from Taco Bell for seven years. Just months later, however, Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco nationwide.
Unilever told The Washington Post that extraordinary demand across its wider portfolio forced the company to make production decisions that included cutting the Choco Taco. The move hit nostalgia lovers hard, especially because the treat had been part of American summers for nearly 40 years.
The reaction was loud. Chef Andrew Zimmern wrote, “This is insanity. Look at the Klondike portfolio and tell me you would discontinue what is arguably the best quiescently frozen dessert treat ever??? Get rid of the Cone Zone or the Cookies n’ Cream sandwich instead! We need our Choco Tacos.”
Chrissy Teigen had a different message for everyone suddenly mourning the snack, writing, “Everyone always takes this s**t for granted when it’s around. Never choosing it over a Snickers ice cream bar so that’s what u get don’t go crying now. U never cared before. U don’t deserve him!!!”
Taco Bell and Salt & Straw eventually stepped into that empty space. Taco Bell’s 2024 Live Más Live announcement showed the brands experimenting with an Ice Cream Chocolate Taco made with cinnamon ancho ice cream, chocolate, and toasted brown rice. Their partnership evolved again in 2025 with the Tacolate, a cinnamon ancho ice cream taco that Salt & Straw now sells in its shops and through nationwide shipping.
Taco Bell says the response gave the companies a reason to go bigger. “Last year’s Tacolate debut quickly became a cult favorite, selling out upon launch weekend, drawing long lines at Salt & Straw scoop shops, and sparking social conversation from fans eager to try the nostalgic treat,” the company said.
Now the ice cream taco has made its way from Philadelphia ice cream trucks to Taco Bell counters all over again. The Churro Ice Cream Taco is not the original Choco Taco, and Taco Bell is not pretending that it is. What the new drop does prove is that more than 40 years after Drazen folded ice cream into a taco shaped cone, people still want that crunch.
