Taco Bell CEO Brian Niccol chatted with Fortune on Tuesday about some of the recent developments at his company, which is owned by Yum Brands YUM 0.10% , including the new test location in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood that will be the first Taco Bell in the U.S. to serve alcohol. The store will sell beer, wine, and mixed drinks and it will also have what the company calls an “urban” aesthetic, including exposed brick walls and murals.
Niccol knows it’s no secret that “a lot of people like to have a beer with their taco,” and he said that the company also recognizes the opportunity to better capitalize on younger customers, among whom there exists a well-established tendency to cap off a night of drinking with a few items from the Taco Bell menu. “What we have found is the twenty-something crowd enjoys a beer with their taco and we also have a history of a late-night business where people have had their own alcohol to go with our food,” he said.
But the fast-food chain’s chief executive also stressed that the Chicago testing location is part of a bigger picture that is about much more than booze. Niccol said:
“What I’ve been telling everybody is the alcohol aspect is not the defining piece of this. Really, what defines this is getting into a smaller footprint, [with] no drive-thru, in urban locations that historically we haven’t been able to get into because we had a big store with a drive-thru. So, the push is to get Taco Bell into urban environments, create a menu that makes sense for that more pedestrian lifestyle, and in this case we’re going to test out selling alcohol to go with our food.”