Ready or not, Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos will be here next month

Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos will be here next month. But it’s OK to start salivating now.

Yes, the company that brought you a taco shell flavored with Doritos nacho cheese will soon roll out one crackling with zesty ranch flavor.

After selling more than 350 million of its Doritos Locos Tacos in the last year, Taco Bell Corp. announced Wednesday that it will introduce the much-anticipated Cool Ranch version March 7.

Doritos Locos Tacos was the company’s most successful product launch ever, and there appears to be enormous hunger for the newest entrant in the fast-food world.

“I’ve never been happier in my life,” one ardent fan gushed on Twitter, echoing nearly verbatim comments from several other people.

Another person wrote: “Is this real life?” It’s unclear whether that was an endorsement.

“Originally we had planned to launch the Cool Ranch flavor in the same year as the introduction of Doritos Locos Tacos,” Greg Creed, Taco Bell’s chief executive, said in a statement. “However, the demand for Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Tacos was so strong that we worked closely with our partner Frito-Lay to increase our capacity and meet the needs of both Doritos Cool Ranch and Nacho Cheese fans.”

The new taco will sell for $1.39 and be festooned with beef, cheddar cheese and lettuce.

It will have 160 calories and 10 grams of fat, which, as Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus pointed out about the original Doritos flavor, makes it “practically a health food” compared with one of the chain’s other offerings, an 880-calorie burrito.

Taco Bell also will offer a less caloric version of the Cool Ranch taco with 140 calories and seven grams of fat.

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Follow Walter Hamilton on Twitter @LATwalter