Between roughly 2019 and 2022, almost every large chain launched a plant-based item. Comparatively few of those items are still on the boards we track. The pattern of where they survived is more interesting than the fact that many did not.
What actually happened
The launches were driven by three things arriving together: credible meat-substitute products at scale, genuine consumer interest, and a public commitment cycle in which no large brand wanted to be the one without an option. That combination produced a very fast, very broad rollout.
Retention then ran into ordinary operational reality. A low-volume item occupies board space, freezer space, prep space and training time. In a format where every square metre and every second is contested, an item that sells modestly is expensive to keep regardless of how well it polls.
Where it stuck
The clearest pattern in our data is that plant-based options survived best in markets with pre-existing vegetarian eating cultures, and worst in markets where they were introduced as a trend. That is not a story about virtue; it is a story about baseline demand.
Across our 255 menus, 955 items carry an explicit dietary tag - Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based or similar. That is roughly 6% of all items, and it is unevenly spread. The salad and sandwich categories carry a disproportionate share, because that is where meat-free options were easiest to build without new equipment.
Find them yourself
Menu pages on this site show dietary tags on the items that carry them, exactly as the source menu published them. Use the item search and filter by country or brand to see what a specific market currently offers.
The fryer problem
This is the single most important practical point and the one menus handle worst. A plant-based patty cooked on a grill that also cooks beef, or fries cooked in oil shared with chicken, is not vegetarian in any meaningful sense - And for many customers that is the whole question.
"Plant-based" describes the ingredient. It does not describe the kitchen.
Some chains are explicit about shared cooking surfaces; many are not, and the information rarely appears on a board. If it matters to you, it needs to be asked at the counter rather than inferred from a menu label. Our data reproduces the labels a menu publishes; it cannot tell you what happens in the kitchen.
The pricing signal
Plant-based items are usually priced at or slightly above their meat equivalents, which surprises people who assume a vegetable is cheaper than beef. Manufactured substitutes are not cheap, volumes are lower, and pricing at parity avoids signalling that the item is a compromise.
| Product | Markets in our index | Cheapest | Priciest | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plant Based Whopper | 5 | $2.28 | $8.18 | $5.92 |
| Subway Veggie Delite | 7 | $1.80 | $6.50 | $4.18 |
| Five Guys Veggie Sandwich | 10 | $1.52 | $8.65 | $5.85 |
| Five Guys Grilled Cheese | 9 | $1.52 | $8.29 | $5.50 |
Note which of those has the widest coverage. The Five Guys Veggie Sandwich appears in ten markets - More than the plant-based Whopper - And it is not a substitute product at all. It is vegetables in a bun, which has been on menus forever and needs no new supply chain.
The most durable meat-free items were never launches
That is the quiet lesson in the data. The meat-free items with the broadest and most stable presence are the ones that were always there: cheese sandwiches, veggie subs, salads, sides, bakery items. They need no new ingredient, no new equipment and no campaign, so nothing about a change in fashion threatens them.
If you eat meat-free and want to know what is actually available in a given market rather than what was announced, that is where to look first - And it is why our salads, sandwiches and sides directories are more useful for the question than any list of plant-based launches. For the wider picture, see vegetarian and vegan fast food.
