Taco Bell plans Cantina with bar, mezzanine in downtown Santa Monica

Taco Bell is betting on downtown Santa Monica as a place to expand its higher-visibility Cantina play, filing permits for a restaurant and bar with a mezzanine at 318 Santa Monica Boulevard. The plan would convert 1,510 square feet of office space into a nearly $400,000 project, putting one of the chain’s more nightlife-oriented formats into the heart of the Third Street Promenade corridor.

That matters inside Taco Bell because a Cantina is not a standard drive-thru box or suburban counter unit. Taco Bell says the format launched in 2015 and remains the chain’s only restaurant model that serves alcohol to customers of legal drinking age. The concept is built around beer, wine, frozen cocktails, tapas-style appetizers, elevated interiors, patios, lounges and other venue-specific designs, which changes the rhythm of the job for crews and managers. A Cantina leans harder on dine-in service, late-night traffic and beverage handling, and it usually asks for more training and tighter coordination than a typical Taco Bell kitchen built around speed and off-premise orders.

Santa Monica is making that bet possible. The city permanently ended its downtown fast-food restriction on Aug. 13, 2025, and explicitly removed limits on fast food and fast casual restaurants on Third Street Promenade. Officials said the updated rules had already helped bring in businesses including AJA Vineyards, Holey Moley, Splatter Studio and Pickle Pop, with Raising Cane’s also headed to the promenade. The city had first banned large chain fast-food businesses in 2018, made the rules permanent in 2021 with a 150-location threshold, then suspended the restriction in 2023 as vacancies climbed and the downtown mix shifted.

The local push goes beyond restaurants alone. Santa Monica approved an Entertainment Zone on May 13, 2025 for the 1200-1400 blocks of the Promenade between Wilshire Boulevard and Broadway, allowing adults 21 and over to buy alcoholic drinks from participating businesses and consume them outdoors on Fridays through Sundays from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., with the option to expand the schedule later. In March 2026, the city council also adopted an eight-point economic development toolkit that included a $3 million fund, elimination of key restaurant fees, an expanded entertainment zone and discounted downtown parking.

For Taco Bell operators and workers, the Santa Monica site signals where the brand still sees room to grow: high-profile urban real estate, heavier evening traffic and a format that can stretch beyond the usual quick-service script. That is especially notable in a market where quick-service restaurant sales were down 13.9% year over year through mid-2025, yet downtown occupancy was still only 76 percent, leaving the city eager for concepts that can activate storefronts and keep people moving along the promenade.