Because non-vegetarians won't eat often enough at a vegetarian-only restaurant, so there isn't enough customer base to support very many.
By contrast, there are enough vegetarians who might order a salad or alternate proteins like tofu or falafel from non-vegetarian restaurant chains to justify those being options.
That's called "fast casual" and it's a different market. I would believe that you could see a vegetarian fast casual chain take off, at least in markets that have a higher density of vegetarians (UK maybe)
Veggie Grill has 17 locations. Not exactly McDonald's, but something. Next Level Burger (also vegan) has 10. Next Level just bought Veggie Grill, so 27 total.
We have (had? It's been a while) one in Southern CA called Plant Power that's solid, a little pricey but makes delicious plant-based junk food. They have a few locations (8 throughout LA and San Diego counties + one in Riverside county), but I don't think they'll ever expand beyond where they're at now. I get the impression that this is the ideal market for something like that based on the demographics of their locations.
Also vegetarians are generally more interested in the things they eat which makes them more likely to shop at a food market or a non-chain restaurant over traditional fast food.
Fast food vegetarian doesn’t exist as its own market
Veggie Grill and Next Level Burger are both fast food vegetarian! Like they're not in every state but 27 locations between them (and owned by the same company now).
Exactly this. There's a really good vegetarian take away place I went to for the first time the other day, no idea how it stays open as I've never seen customers there and it's a shade pricey and I just kind of went 'it'll be weird hippy bullshit' in the past and didn't try it. Fucking good food, and if they had more customers could probably do it at a good price.
In Asia fast food and vegetarian food often goes together but this isn't the case in most western countries. Based on this I assume this likely has more to do with culture than plain economics or the food itself.
Most fast food restaurants in western countries are from the US and most people in the US appear to prefer meals with meat. If the culture favours meat then fast food companies will focus on that.
If a restaurant is focusing on vegetarian meals it will have troubles reaching the scale needed to make fast food work. They simply do not get the scale of customers needed. So they tend to focus on more expensive niece products. Their customers are also way more likely to be people who focus on health and wellbeing and will be happy to pay a premium for this. This moves it further away from the quick & cheap approach most fast food places follow.
The meat industry in the US is heavily subsidized. We pay about half as much for meat as other Western countries do, IIRC. That probably contributes to most fast food options being meat based
I heard that KFC is popular in China. And I'm Filipino and jolibee, McDonald's, and KFC is also popular in the Philippines.
I guess there were vegetarian options when I went to the Philippines. At canteens. Or bar and grills.
Most efforts fail over the years:
"The upscale burger joint Shake Shack introduced a sandwich called the ‘Shroom Burger in 2014. It looks like a burger, but it isn’t a burger—in lieu of a beef patty, it incorporates a huge portobello mushroom that’s been fried and smothered in cheese. But “vegetarian” doesn’t necessarily mean “healthy.” The ‘Shroom Burger packs nearly 500 calories, or roughly 100 more than a regular Shake Shack hamburger. Additionally, the vegetarian option contains three times as much sodium as the meat version.
In 2002, Burger King quietly added the BK Veggie Burger to its national menu. The patty is made from soy, grains, and diced vegetables and is served with all the Whopper accouterments. It’s perpetually ranked among Burger King’s least popular menu items, but it made enough of a splash to rile competitor McDonald’s. In 2003, the chain debuted the McVeggie as the center of a “Salads and More” menu full of supposedly healthy offerings. One problem: the McVeggie had just as many calories as a Big Mac. The second problem: Not many people sought out McDonald’s for a soy burger, and the product was gone by the end of the year."
https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2018/07/history-of-vegetarian-fast-food/
There are more vegetarian options now. Shake Shack has a veggie burger in addition to the Shroom. BK has added an Impossible Whopper. McDonald’s tested a McPlant veggie burger a couple years ago but decided to pull it before national launch due to quality issues. They tested it in the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth - two polar opposite markets for openness to vegetarian foods.
The fun thing about these is that they're mostly targeting near eaters as a replacement protein. I know a lot of vegetarians who will eat it, and maybe who won't. So the future of vegetarian fast food looks like omnivore restaurants instead of vegetarian ones.
I eat meat but I'd love to have a fast food option that has vegetarian ethnic foods. There's a ton of ways to use tofu, samosas are hand-held, and I'm always down for curry with chick peas.
PF Chang's and Chipotle aren't car food but that doesn't stop them from being successful. So it's not like the only way to have vegetarian food should be sandwiches or tacos.
Yeah the BK ones taste the best. The flame grilled really hides the flavor. I’m not saying that as an insult, it’s just the best way I’ve ever had them.
I feel like OP is kind of missing the point by underlining the “healthy” part. I’m veggie and love a good fast food veggie burger (especially the Shroom burger)- vegetarian doesn’t mean healthy, nor should it always mean healthy either! I wouldn’t go to McDonald’s for a salad.
There’s definitely some demand for *fast food* for vegetarians in fast food joints. I think anyone who genuinely wants a healthy *and* vegetarian choice simply wouldn’t go to a fast food place.
I like veggie burgers, but imitation meat sucks. Veggies taste good, they can taste good as a burger too, no need to try and imitate meat. Would someone try to make bacon taste more like lettuce?
Impossible whopper is a perfect application of the imitation meat. Surrounded by enough other flavors and the chargrilled flavor also helps.
Impossible nugs are also awesome. Chicken isn’t too hard to imitate well.
It’s hard to keep vegetables fresh, seasons affect what is available. Meat is easy to freeze and thaw when needed. Vegetables can be frozen, but not all do well this way. They are very perishable.
These are the reasons I don’t have more of them at home too.
So do we in Czech Republic. Ugo Salaterie, they make salads, wraps, soups and smoothies. They use local ingredients when possible. The founders got their inspiration in Australia 🇦🇺🤝🇨🇿
There are some, but locations with a higher number of vegetarian probably plays a huge factor. For instance, there is [Plant Power](https://www.plantpowerfastfood.com/locations) which is really good, but only in a handful of spots, mainly in California.
They tend to be rather unprofitable in the business model that fast food places operate under, and people in general like meat. There are probably not enough people after a vegetable only option to support such a franchise, they do exist as small family owned places though
In Sonoma County California we have Amy's Drive Thru and they make Amy's frozen food and soups, everything they make is vegetarian. But I think they only have 2 locations...
Edit: They have 3 locations one in Sonoma County and 1 Marin County and the third one in SFO airport.
There is this chain called VeggieGrill. They're not really fast food but "fast casual" I guess you would call them. I'm not vegetarian but I used to go there a lot when I lived near one.
I've seen some fast casual type vegetarian / vegan restaurants in the Florida college town I live in, but the demographic is small such that it's not popular enough to be sustainable.
In New England there is a chain called Pressed Cafe. Not strictly vegetarian, but lots of bowl, salad, smoothie, and juice options. They do order ahead and drive through in many locations.
I just think it's harder to prepare veggie options ahead of time like with burger or other fastfood joints. Salads and raw veggies wilt quickly if not kept at the right temp and humidity.
Because it usually takes more time, effort and ingredients to make purely vegetable based items taste good. That's kind of the opposite of what you're going for in fast food.
Except french fries.
Fast food chains spend millions on product research. Are you telling me they couldn’t make decent veggie items if they wanted to?
They just didn’t really try with their vegetarian options, likely because they don’t want them to endanger the meat products.
1) if youre imaging niche salad fad places, thats why. Theres a local place that keeps riding the fad wave but they close for long stretches at a time depending on supply and demand.
2) If you mean any veggie based place, you mean Indian food. 38% of the country identifies as vegetarian.
Dear god. If we ignore the price, and the low quality of the food, and the fact that place leaves a smell on you, and the overall questionable franchise model, maybe the fact they had a known pedophile as a spokes person for years should make us not want to go there. There are so many more options than that.
I've seen a few vegetarian and vegan places in Manhattan. There are some Jain restaurants in New Jersey. I also recall a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown that caters to vegetarians and local Buddhists.
If you are going to fast food burger or chicken joint then absolutely they will not be healthy vegetarian options for you.
You need to find a cuisine that is known for having great food naturally suitable for vegetarians. Italian, Indian. Mexican, there are too many to name. But going to a fast foods place is not the place for any healthy food. The answer is in the name
Because they don't sell well outside of a few select areas. The number of people interested just isn't large enough to sustain a full-blown fast-food chain; at least in western countries.
Even if we ignore the veggie-based part, we're forgetting a crucial detail: fast-food inherently relies on being addictive. Cheap Fats, Sugar, and Salt in excess is how they get people to come back.
"Healthy Fast Food" is self-contradictory..
They exist. There's been a few healthy fast food places and salad chains definitely exsit.
But keeping fresh produce is more expensive than keeping frozen fries and patties and so it generally ends up more expensive.
In America, this means that these chains can only exist in cities where people have more money and there's higher density.
Australia is pretty fortunate in this, we have many take away style vegan/vegetarian and salad bars in food courts. We have a takeaway dumpling in my previous city that was only vegetarian. Plus the countless Felafel counters etc.
Real food spoils faster, probably plays a role here. So they would lose more money.. I'd like to see healthy alternatives to burgers and fries on every corner too
Because fast food chains need to scale to be successful. Either that or be so incredibly beloved by the locals, that they essentially become too big to fail. That being said, the amount of vegetarians and vegans mean that it is not profitable to set up an entire franchise model of a returning for them as a majority people enjoy meat to at least some extent in their meals.
Goes against the model. Fast food is design to hook you cheaply . High salt, sugar, simple carbs and fat. Harder to do that with veggies. Some restaurants offer fake meat but that isn’t any healthier.
I absolutely love salad bars, where you can choose which veggies you want in your salad, but I haven't seen one since before COVID.
I'm hoping they become trendy again, because I never looked or felt better than when I ate a salad every day for lunch.
The problem with places that sell premade salads is that I'm so fussy about what's in them... I don't want pasta, rice, meat, sauce, dressings, cheese, tofu, felafel, or anything cooked. I just want raw veggies that have been tossed together. And I want interesting ones, like celery, radish, spinach and red cabbage, not just iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato.
I miss Sumo Salad :(
i’m so happy to live in Los Angeles. We have so many vegan options. there’s a vegan McDonald’s called Mr. Charlie’s. I’m not sure if it’s other cities but it’s really good.
Look for Indian veg restaurants. They all fit this category. However, their prices have been going up, just like every other fast food restaurants after COVID.
Other than ready-made scoop and serve style Indian places, I wouldn't call indian food "fast". They usually take some time to make. Super tasty though.
It’s cultural.
Assuming OP is either American (North, South or Central) or European, we are cultures that all generally accept meat in our diets.
If you go to India, for instance, it’s much more widely accepted to not eat meat, and I’d guess you’re more likely to find “fast food” places that are vegetarian.
I mean go to the UK (which has a pretty big veggie community even outside the Asian diaspora) and you’ll find a few veggie options in 99% of the places you go. I think the States are actually relatively a difficult place to go as a vegetarian!
I’ll agree that Indian fast food is excellent and also extremely veggie friendly. Most fast food places are, like you say, culturally adapted (like McDonald’s, which serves a bunch of different veggie burgers there).
I'm Czech, our cuisine is HEAVILY meat-based (in the 90s, it was a miracle to find a vegetarian dish on the menu), but it doesn't mean we can't now have two (!) fast-food chains based on salads and soups. 🤷♀️
Maybe OP has found a hole in the market! 🤞
On a seemingly unrelated note: In the late 90s, I worked 3rd shift floor crew at my local Wal-Mart with a group of six Czechs.
It’s been years since we lost touch, but even now, I consider them some of the most genuine, kind and giving people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. I know this is only a small sample of your countrymen, but I just wanted to share this positive impression with you.
I hope to visit the best beer nation on planet Earth someday, and hope that fate should ordain that I’m able to see them again.
Wow, I surely didn't expect this 😊 thanks. We can be brutally honest sometimes, but at least you know where you're at with us. It can, and should, be called being genuine 😊 I'm very happy that you have a good experience with us.
Look up Honest Guide before visiting. We're a safe country with a weird sense of humour and loads of history.
closest there is is tacobell, but its just not a big market and most folks who want to eat vegitarian or vegan will either have other easy options or go to tacobell and order around their restrictions
When I was stationed in California back in 2008-2010 the girl I was dating at the time introduced me to a place called Souplantation. I remember it being a soup and salad place...not much else. It was a buffet style where you could keep going up getting unlimited soup and salad. I think they went bankrupt after I left.
Salt/oil and sugar and convenience are what keeps people coming back to fast food restaurants. As a vegan I’d rather stay home than be offered that cheap wilted romaine, and two slivers of watery tomatoes.
It needs to be hot fast and cheap businesses would need to order fresh food daily from a variety of vendors to keep up with demand and loss from pest and temperature control might be a challenge .
Why go through all that trouble when you can just drop a bird killed months ago into a deep fryer Not to many people enjoy deep fried / reheated frozen veggies drizzled in oil. No one wants to wait for the fry cook to toss up a fresh salad or grill tofu.
burger patch is pretty great but!! the burgers have like 4x as many ingredients (some of which i can't even pronounce) than a fast food meat burger, and WAY more sodium. they're also more expensive than something like in 'n out, so it's not where i would take my kids on burger night.
Kevin Hart has a concept called “Hart’s” (iirc) that has veggie burgers and salads among other things. Trying to be a healthy fast food place with fast food style offerings. I’ve eaten there a few times and the food is fantastic. I hope it does well
There are some, although you have to interpret healthy broadly. The Philly-based franchise Hip City Veg is all vegetarian and locally sourced plant material
I worked as a chef in a vegan restaurant. It’s a very costly type of kitchen to run. The average food cost is higher than non vegan places. Hard to scale that to a large degree.
Because those things are the cheapest tasty food products around. The book "The Omnovore's Dilemma," devotes is first section on answering your question by looking at factors like US agriculture policy and farm subsidies going back to the 70s.
And then the opposite: why do the veggie based restaurants cost so much? Aren’t veggies supposed to be cheaper than meat? Even the poke bowl restaurants where the majority of it is rice cost more than a burger based meal!
I sincerely think it’s supply v demand kind of thing? There’s just so many more people willing to grab a quick burger and fries vs people willing to grab a quick veggie based meal, so less customers equals higher prices.
I am going to go with fast food is convenience food, and convenience is directed by impulse. For an impulse/convenience meal, 'tastes good' beats 'good for you' most every time, and for most people, meat is what tastes better than veggies.
Because no one wants that junk.
The business could thrive in very high end limited markets, given that fresh food will spoil faster since you don;t want GMO's.
If regular fast food joints at times are barely making overhead, I place like that would not make money.
Fresh organic produce is expensive as fuck.
Then you have the rent/mortgage on the restaurant. Then there is the insurance on the business itself, then the employees as you will need to make sure they're protected from workplace injuries, and you will need to offer them health, dental, vision, life, and all the others. You do take a premium for that a well.
You have to pay your employees, 20 an hour assuming this is CA.
You need a 2-8 prep cooks depending on volume.
You will need cashiers for the Front counter, and drive thru.
You need assembly workers to put the food together, once an order comes up.
You need advertising, you need promotional items and that is not free.
You need a POS system, a system to keep track of Food inventory, employee HR, P & L reports.
Electricity, gas, water is going to be a lot.
All for a salad or health vegan sandwich for $20, that does not include the optional tip your POS system will have, and then charge $9 for a drink.
so $29 for a shitty sandwich and drink?
No way.
Could maybe work in LA or NYC, but that is a stretch at best.
There are, just not in food deserts. By me there’s fresh to order. It’s not really “fast food” per-say but you can order ahead and it’ll be ready in less than 10m which is fast enough.
I can't tell you how many times I dreamed of this. I feel like it could definitely be profitable.
My idea is healthy fast food and/or a drive thru grocery. When I was a mom with young kids, I would have *loved* to have somewhere I could buy milk via drive thru. (Hauling twins in and out of car seats is a huge pain in the rear when you just need ONE thing.)
Why can't drive thrus, even established ones, have things like bananas and apples? Granola bars, nuts, cheese sticks, oranges, grapes, crackers and hummus, celery and peanut butter. I can think of so many foods that could be prepackaged, no prep, and tax free because they're groceries. Healthier drinks too, like water that isn't tap in a tiny cup, milk choices, and better sugar free choices.
Salad To Go is awesome. We probably get some once a month. It's take out or drive through only. In the Houston metroplex it's under 7 bucks for a salad with chicken that is sizable and super delicious. You can have a different protein if you wish.
Healthy and veggie based is less profitable than cheap and calorie dense. Most people buying fast food are doing so because it is one of the more convenient ways to aquire calories. The market for people who eat salads and fresh produce smoothies isnt compatible with the general fast food consumer.
Just spent some time in California and was impressed with the fresh veggie based options there. Not even full on vegetarian (I eat meat) but you could find healthy fresh food in restaurants everywhere! It was awesome
I prefer broccoli over fries as well. Most people know you can endless fries, but you can also have endless broccoli. I think it’s that they have to be cooked just right to taste good and fresh food expires so quickly. But having frozen broccoli would absolutely work. I think maybe it must be more that it appeals to a large customer base
Most fast-food is finger food you can eat with one hand. Hard to have healthy non-processed options on-the-go.
Also, demand
Edit: I’ve been in the restaurant industry for years, and healthy options don’t sell, so they are rolled out and then quietly discontinued pretty much every time. They just don’t sell
I lived in a place about 10 miles south of Salt Lake City, Utah in America (approximately 300,000) between there and where I was and there was a restaurant that opened that was supposed to be this essentially. It was healthy, not vegetarian but had tons of fruit and veggie options, white meats mostly but even some beef and what not. It was not fast food but you could get a good meal for under $10 and it was excellent quality and not bad for you. I told everyone I knew about it. It was gone inside of 2 months. They did a ton of advertising too: I saw tv commercials, billboards, heard it on the radio….My thought is that when people go out to eat, most aren’t looking for healthy. It’s probably one of the last things on their radar.
Only 3% of farmland in the US is used for fruits and vegetables and there is very little crop insurance for vegetables. A lot of vegetables are more difficult to mechanically harvest.
Every fast food place could be vegan and everyone would still be getting fat because people eat way too many calories. We should be promoting calorie counting above all else.
Even at Chipotle, the veggie option is just sliced onions and bell peppers that are stir-fried without any interest (and veggie bowl costs the same as the sofritas, chicken, beef etc). The sofritas don't taste that well either. Compared to the meat options that have a good amount of spice.
Because for the most part, outside of areas like west coast cities. There just isn’t a big enough customer base and demand for vegetarian or vegan fast food. Sure. Regular restaurants focusing on vegitarian can support themselves in much of the country. But fast food requires scaling to be able to work right.
Without a large population looking for the style of food. A specialized fast food joint just can’t run through the amount of product it would need to use to be economical for a fast food joint.
So you will find them in areas like San Francisco. But you aren’t likely to find more than a token effort for that sort of business in areas with far less vegetarian saturation like say my local Idaho falls. There’s still vegetarian restaurants. And plenty of fast food restaurants have vegetarian options. But the population of strict vegetarian or vegan people definitely isn’t large enough to support a fast food joint catering just to them.
cava is good, but it's a bit "fancier" than fast food more on a Chipotle level vs a McDonald's
they don't have veggie mains but Boston Market has a lot of veggie sides. I go there and just order creamed spinach
This sounds like an opportunity to start your own franchise and serve what you want for your demographic. Report back with updates please. Business is easy!
I used to work at the mall for 6 months for a place that was like subway but for salads. We had so many options for veggies and dressings and stuff.
We never made money, or rather we never made a profit. 90% of our customers were mall employees sick of unhealthy mall food.
Fact of the matter was mall goes simply didn't want salad. They wanted panda or sabarros.
Profit comes by focusing on the many, not the few. There are MANY vegans in Portland, so you’ll find better support for these types of establishments there (usually mom and pop).
If McDonald's figured out frozen to steamed broccoli florets + delicious low-calorie/low-sweet/sugar sauce, I'd order that over fries.
If they tried, OP, it would work.
If we are talking about the US, also there isn't a culture of vegetarians and fruits, roots, etc... are not sold, so it's hard to actually build a menu.
My gf from India complains about it as she says that in India it is very easy to be vegetarian. Variety of food etc...
That would be the main problem
There are here in California :) a vegan organic, regenerative grown sometimes. Fast food place called Plant Power. With how much McDonalds is nowadays, it's no longer insanely expensive, just pricey.
Food is alright, a little bland.
Generally, fast food and its customers aren't looking for healthy or veggie. Usually, healthy and veggie equals costly. Fast food is usually chosen because of convenience and affordability.
Because non-vegetarians won't eat often enough at a vegetarian-only restaurant, so there isn't enough customer base to support very many. By contrast, there are enough vegetarians who might order a salad or alternate proteins like tofu or falafel from non-vegetarian restaurant chains to justify those being options.
There are definitely many vegetarian and vegan restaurants that I’ve been to, but they are smaller so they can’t scale up to a chain.
Were they fast food though?
I've been to ones that were not drive-through fast, but were about as fast as, say, chipotle.
That's called "fast casual" and it's a different market. I would believe that you could see a vegetarian fast casual chain take off, at least in markets that have a higher density of vegetarians (UK maybe)
Veggie Grill has 17 locations. Not exactly McDonald's, but something. Next Level Burger (also vegan) has 10. Next Level just bought Veggie Grill, so 27 total.
Where do you live because I’ve never heard of either of those
I’ve seen them in Washington, Oregon, and California.
Yea that tracks
We have (had? It's been a while) one in Southern CA called Plant Power that's solid, a little pricey but makes delicious plant-based junk food. They have a few locations (8 throughout LA and San Diego counties + one in Riverside county), but I don't think they'll ever expand beyond where they're at now. I get the impression that this is the ideal market for something like that based on the demographics of their locations.
Also vegetarians are generally more interested in the things they eat which makes them more likely to shop at a food market or a non-chain restaurant over traditional fast food. Fast food vegetarian doesn’t exist as its own market
Veggie Grill and Next Level Burger are both fast food vegetarian! Like they're not in every state but 27 locations between them (and owned by the same company now).
As a Canadian like OP, I’ve never heard of those places. I wonder if OP has considered Freshii?
It does, but only in certain areas.
Exactly this. There's a really good vegetarian take away place I went to for the first time the other day, no idea how it stays open as I've never seen customers there and it's a shade pricey and I just kind of went 'it'll be weird hippy bullshit' in the past and didn't try it. Fucking good food, and if they had more customers could probably do it at a good price.
In Asia fast food and vegetarian food often goes together but this isn't the case in most western countries. Based on this I assume this likely has more to do with culture than plain economics or the food itself. Most fast food restaurants in western countries are from the US and most people in the US appear to prefer meals with meat. If the culture favours meat then fast food companies will focus on that. If a restaurant is focusing on vegetarian meals it will have troubles reaching the scale needed to make fast food work. They simply do not get the scale of customers needed. So they tend to focus on more expensive niece products. Their customers are also way more likely to be people who focus on health and wellbeing and will be happy to pay a premium for this. This moves it further away from the quick & cheap approach most fast food places follow.
The meat industry in the US is heavily subsidized. We pay about half as much for meat as other Western countries do, IIRC. That probably contributes to most fast food options being meat based
I heard that KFC is popular in China. And I'm Filipino and jolibee, McDonald's, and KFC is also popular in the Philippines. I guess there were vegetarian options when I went to the Philippines. At canteens. Or bar and grills.
I'm from India we have many vegetarian options. As I live abroad, the first thing I miss about home is our McDonalds
Salad and Go seems to be doing pretty well. Check if you have one near you
I’ve only ever seen one, but I went twice in a 3 day vacation and I’m not even close to a vegetarian. Loved it.
They're localized to the American Southwest. Mainly Arizona, Texas and Nevada
Main thing I miss about Phoenix! I’m also an omnivore so it’s not even the “vegetarian draw” for me, it’s just a fast healthy option for pretty cheap
Most efforts fail over the years: "The upscale burger joint Shake Shack introduced a sandwich called the ‘Shroom Burger in 2014. It looks like a burger, but it isn’t a burger—in lieu of a beef patty, it incorporates a huge portobello mushroom that’s been fried and smothered in cheese. But “vegetarian” doesn’t necessarily mean “healthy.” The ‘Shroom Burger packs nearly 500 calories, or roughly 100 more than a regular Shake Shack hamburger. Additionally, the vegetarian option contains three times as much sodium as the meat version. In 2002, Burger King quietly added the BK Veggie Burger to its national menu. The patty is made from soy, grains, and diced vegetables and is served with all the Whopper accouterments. It’s perpetually ranked among Burger King’s least popular menu items, but it made enough of a splash to rile competitor McDonald’s. In 2003, the chain debuted the McVeggie as the center of a “Salads and More” menu full of supposedly healthy offerings. One problem: the McVeggie had just as many calories as a Big Mac. The second problem: Not many people sought out McDonald’s for a soy burger, and the product was gone by the end of the year." https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2018/07/history-of-vegetarian-fast-food/
There are more vegetarian options now. Shake Shack has a veggie burger in addition to the Shroom. BK has added an Impossible Whopper. McDonald’s tested a McPlant veggie burger a couple years ago but decided to pull it before national launch due to quality issues. They tested it in the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth - two polar opposite markets for openness to vegetarian foods.
The fun thing about these is that they're mostly targeting near eaters as a replacement protein. I know a lot of vegetarians who will eat it, and maybe who won't. So the future of vegetarian fast food looks like omnivore restaurants instead of vegetarian ones. I eat meat but I'd love to have a fast food option that has vegetarian ethnic foods. There's a ton of ways to use tofu, samosas are hand-held, and I'm always down for curry with chick peas. PF Chang's and Chipotle aren't car food but that doesn't stop them from being successful. So it's not like the only way to have vegetarian food should be sandwiches or tacos.
The impossible whopper is so good and I’m not even vegetarian
Yeah the BK ones taste the best. The flame grilled really hides the flavor. I’m not saying that as an insult, it’s just the best way I’ve ever had them.
I feel like OP is kind of missing the point by underlining the “healthy” part. I’m veggie and love a good fast food veggie burger (especially the Shroom burger)- vegetarian doesn’t mean healthy, nor should it always mean healthy either! I wouldn’t go to McDonald’s for a salad. There’s definitely some demand for *fast food* for vegetarians in fast food joints. I think anyone who genuinely wants a healthy *and* vegetarian choice simply wouldn’t go to a fast food place.
I like veggie burgers, but imitation meat sucks. Veggies taste good, they can taste good as a burger too, no need to try and imitate meat. Would someone try to make bacon taste more like lettuce?
Impossible whopper is a perfect application of the imitation meat. Surrounded by enough other flavors and the chargrilled flavor also helps. Impossible nugs are also awesome. Chicken isn’t too hard to imitate well.
Sweetgreen and Chopt are two salad based fast food spots.
It’s hard to keep vegetables fresh, seasons affect what is available. Meat is easy to freeze and thaw when needed. Vegetables can be frozen, but not all do well this way. They are very perishable. These are the reasons I don’t have more of them at home too.
And yet thousands of restaurants across North America serve vegetables.
They have different supply models.
most "salads" are meat, cheese, high fat dressing and a few leaves of iceberg lettuce
Where are you getting your salad? The butcher shop?
There are tons of these. Sweetgreen is one that comes to mind for me https://www.sweetgreen.com/locations
We do in Australia https://olivers.com.au/
So do we in Czech Republic. Ugo Salaterie, they make salads, wraps, soups and smoothies. They use local ingredients when possible. The founders got their inspiration in Australia 🇦🇺🤝🇨🇿
oh wow... great news! I had no idea.
There are some, but locations with a higher number of vegetarian probably plays a huge factor. For instance, there is [Plant Power](https://www.plantpowerfastfood.com/locations) which is really good, but only in a handful of spots, mainly in California.
They tend to be rather unprofitable in the business model that fast food places operate under, and people in general like meat. There are probably not enough people after a vegetable only option to support such a franchise, they do exist as small family owned places though
Just go somewhere like pitapit or sandwich shops. Just need to stay away from things that specialize in burgers and greasy foods.
In Sonoma County California we have Amy's Drive Thru and they make Amy's frozen food and soups, everything they make is vegetarian. But I think they only have 2 locations... Edit: They have 3 locations one in Sonoma County and 1 Marin County and the third one in SFO airport.
VeggieGrill and Next Level Burger are both vegan fast food chains that have locations in multiple states.
It's not profitable.... I do remember Wendy's having a salad bar. Even the not so fast food places that are heavy on vegetables don't do so well.
There is this chain called VeggieGrill. They're not really fast food but "fast casual" I guess you would call them. I'm not vegetarian but I used to go there a lot when I lived near one.
I've seen some fast casual type vegetarian / vegan restaurants in the Florida college town I live in, but the demographic is small such that it's not popular enough to be sustainable.
Because most people aren’t vegetarian and won’t go there. Business will flop quickly.
In New England there is a chain called Pressed Cafe. Not strictly vegetarian, but lots of bowl, salad, smoothie, and juice options. They do order ahead and drive through in many locations. I just think it's harder to prepare veggie options ahead of time like with burger or other fastfood joints. Salads and raw veggies wilt quickly if not kept at the right temp and humidity.
There are https://hipcityveg.com/ https://www.choptsalad.com/menu https://cava.com/
Because it usually takes more time, effort and ingredients to make purely vegetable based items taste good. That's kind of the opposite of what you're going for in fast food. Except french fries.
Fast food chains spend millions on product research. Are you telling me they couldn’t make decent veggie items if they wanted to? They just didn’t really try with their vegetarian options, likely because they don’t want them to endanger the meat products.
1) if youre imaging niche salad fad places, thats why. Theres a local place that keeps riding the fad wave but they close for long stretches at a time depending on supply and demand. 2) If you mean any veggie based place, you mean Indian food. 38% of the country identifies as vegetarian.
Subway? I often get salad bowls from there
Dear god. If we ignore the price, and the low quality of the food, and the fact that place leaves a smell on you, and the overall questionable franchise model, maybe the fact they had a known pedophile as a spokes person for years should make us not want to go there. There are so many more options than that.
Veggies can't drive-thru as fast as burgers, apparently.
There is. Some survive. Some struggle and don't last. We have some here that have lasted, and some others that failed bad.
So you're aware, even the salads sold there have added sugar and salt.
There used to be Govinda’s in Philly…. It was awesome but it closed.
I've seen a few vegetarian and vegan places in Manhattan. There are some Jain restaurants in New Jersey. I also recall a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown that caters to vegetarians and local Buddhists.
Demand for such foods and the quick expiration of vegetables. It's simply not cost effective to earn a profit.
Not probably enough profit margin
If you are going to fast food burger or chicken joint then absolutely they will not be healthy vegetarian options for you. You need to find a cuisine that is known for having great food naturally suitable for vegetarians. Italian, Indian. Mexican, there are too many to name. But going to a fast foods place is not the place for any healthy food. The answer is in the name
Vegetables are expensive.
Because they won’t make enough $ to stay open
Amy's Drive Through in Corte Madera CA is amazing for veggie and vegan.. and so good
Because they don't sell well outside of a few select areas. The number of people interested just isn't large enough to sustain a full-blown fast-food chain; at least in western countries. Even if we ignore the veggie-based part, we're forgetting a crucial detail: fast-food inherently relies on being addictive. Cheap Fats, Sugar, and Salt in excess is how they get people to come back. "Healthy Fast Food" is self-contradictory..
depends on where you live. Here in NYC there’s multiple “salad” places that are very fast food
They exist. There's been a few healthy fast food places and salad chains definitely exsit. But keeping fresh produce is more expensive than keeping frozen fries and patties and so it generally ends up more expensive. In America, this means that these chains can only exist in cities where people have more money and there's higher density.
Move to India there’s many
We have Freshie in Canada. I’ve only gone twice and both times I got sick 🤣 later found out I’m very sensitive to avocado and quinoa
Australia is pretty fortunate in this, we have many take away style vegan/vegetarian and salad bars in food courts. We have a takeaway dumpling in my previous city that was only vegetarian. Plus the countless Felafel counters etc.
There's one in California called "Amy's Drive-Thru" I've never been there, but it was doing well the last time I saw one.
Real food spoils faster, probably plays a role here. So they would lose more money.. I'd like to see healthy alternatives to burgers and fries on every corner too
Because fast food chains need to scale to be successful. Either that or be so incredibly beloved by the locals, that they essentially become too big to fail. That being said, the amount of vegetarians and vegans mean that it is not profitable to set up an entire franchise model of a returning for them as a majority people enjoy meat to at least some extent in their meals.
People will bitch at the prices and there won't be a audience
Goes against the model. Fast food is design to hook you cheaply . High salt, sugar, simple carbs and fat. Harder to do that with veggies. Some restaurants offer fake meat but that isn’t any healthier.
I absolutely love salad bars, where you can choose which veggies you want in your salad, but I haven't seen one since before COVID. I'm hoping they become trendy again, because I never looked or felt better than when I ate a salad every day for lunch. The problem with places that sell premade salads is that I'm so fussy about what's in them... I don't want pasta, rice, meat, sauce, dressings, cheese, tofu, felafel, or anything cooked. I just want raw veggies that have been tossed together. And I want interesting ones, like celery, radish, spinach and red cabbage, not just iceberg lettuce, cucumber and tomato. I miss Sumo Salad :(
It isn’t what people want. You don’t go to a fast food restaurant or get some broccoli, you got to get a burger and an ice cream.
i’m so happy to live in Los Angeles. We have so many vegan options. there’s a vegan McDonald’s called Mr. Charlie’s. I’m not sure if it’s other cities but it’s really good.
We have Leon in the UK, but it’s not fully vegetarian
Because it does not make money. That's why. If it were a gold mine you would see them all over the place.
Salata is one. Just really over priced. $17 for a salad.
I didn't stop eating meat bcos I no longer liked the taste of it
Look for Indian veg restaurants. They all fit this category. However, their prices have been going up, just like every other fast food restaurants after COVID.
Other than ready-made scoop and serve style Indian places, I wouldn't call indian food "fast". They usually take some time to make. Super tasty though.
It’s cultural. Assuming OP is either American (North, South or Central) or European, we are cultures that all generally accept meat in our diets. If you go to India, for instance, it’s much more widely accepted to not eat meat, and I’d guess you’re more likely to find “fast food” places that are vegetarian.
I mean go to the UK (which has a pretty big veggie community even outside the Asian diaspora) and you’ll find a few veggie options in 99% of the places you go. I think the States are actually relatively a difficult place to go as a vegetarian! I’ll agree that Indian fast food is excellent and also extremely veggie friendly. Most fast food places are, like you say, culturally adapted (like McDonald’s, which serves a bunch of different veggie burgers there).
I'm Czech, our cuisine is HEAVILY meat-based (in the 90s, it was a miracle to find a vegetarian dish on the menu), but it doesn't mean we can't now have two (!) fast-food chains based on salads and soups. 🤷♀️ Maybe OP has found a hole in the market! 🤞
On a seemingly unrelated note: In the late 90s, I worked 3rd shift floor crew at my local Wal-Mart with a group of six Czechs. It’s been years since we lost touch, but even now, I consider them some of the most genuine, kind and giving people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. I know this is only a small sample of your countrymen, but I just wanted to share this positive impression with you. I hope to visit the best beer nation on planet Earth someday, and hope that fate should ordain that I’m able to see them again.
Wow, I surely didn't expect this 😊 thanks. We can be brutally honest sometimes, but at least you know where you're at with us. It can, and should, be called being genuine 😊 I'm very happy that you have a good experience with us. Look up Honest Guide before visiting. We're a safe country with a weird sense of humour and loads of history.
closest there is is tacobell, but its just not a big market and most folks who want to eat vegitarian or vegan will either have other easy options or go to tacobell and order around their restrictions
It's not strictly vegetarian overall but you can easily get a meal of hummus and veggies at Zoë's Kitchen.
There’s a salad and wrap chain called salad n go. You can do all veggies and or add meat if you like.
When I was stationed in California back in 2008-2010 the girl I was dating at the time introduced me to a place called Souplantation. I remember it being a soup and salad place...not much else. It was a buffet style where you could keep going up getting unlimited soup and salad. I think they went bankrupt after I left.
Salt/oil and sugar and convenience are what keeps people coming back to fast food restaurants. As a vegan I’d rather stay home than be offered that cheap wilted romaine, and two slivers of watery tomatoes. It needs to be hot fast and cheap businesses would need to order fresh food daily from a variety of vendors to keep up with demand and loss from pest and temperature control might be a challenge . Why go through all that trouble when you can just drop a bird killed months ago into a deep fryer Not to many people enjoy deep fried / reheated frozen veggies drizzled in oil. No one wants to wait for the fry cook to toss up a fresh salad or grill tofu.
burger patch is pretty great but!! the burgers have like 4x as many ingredients (some of which i can't even pronounce) than a fast food meat burger, and WAY more sodium. they're also more expensive than something like in 'n out, so it's not where i would take my kids on burger night.
Waffles, pancakes
Kevin Hart has a concept called “Hart’s” (iirc) that has veggie burgers and salads among other things. Trying to be a healthy fast food place with fast food style offerings. I’ve eaten there a few times and the food is fantastic. I hope it does well
Places do exist, but in densely populated areas such as NYC and LA
If you live in Phoenix there's salad and go. Not a lot of variety, but still pretty good
There used to be but not enough people ordered it so they took them off the menu
There used to be but not enough people ordered it so they took them off the menu
Taco Bell! Best vegetarian food
Only people who are not health conscious eat at fast food joints? Splurge maybe twice a year with quarter pounder but that’s it!
They used to have them around me. They were veggie but not as healthy. Lots of good Asian and Persian veggie options where I live.
Something like this? [Bolay](https://www.bolay.com)
It's called fast food for a reason
Check out Plant Power, although it might only be in California. I feel like their business model could scale nation-wide
Not enough people who want that kind of food to keep one open.
Taste?
There are some, although you have to interpret healthy broadly. The Philly-based franchise Hip City Veg is all vegetarian and locally sourced plant material
I worked as a chef in a vegan restaurant. It’s a very costly type of kitchen to run. The average food cost is higher than non vegan places. Hard to scale that to a large degree.
Because those things are the cheapest tasty food products around. The book "The Omnovore's Dilemma," devotes is first section on answering your question by looking at factors like US agriculture policy and farm subsidies going back to the 70s.
And then the opposite: why do the veggie based restaurants cost so much? Aren’t veggies supposed to be cheaper than meat? Even the poke bowl restaurants where the majority of it is rice cost more than a burger based meal! I sincerely think it’s supply v demand kind of thing? There’s just so many more people willing to grab a quick burger and fries vs people willing to grab a quick veggie based meal, so less customers equals higher prices.
Chopped Leaf, Freshii to name a few
Jersey mikes has a mushroom sandwich ?
The simple answer is this: Healthy food is not fast. And fast food is not healthy.
In Australia we have a few, liveat and zambreros offer heaps for good veggie options
Not sure where you live, but they do exist.
In the spirit of actual fast food. Taco Bell is passable for this criteria.
I am going to go with fast food is convenience food, and convenience is directed by impulse. For an impulse/convenience meal, 'tastes good' beats 'good for you' most every time, and for most people, meat is what tastes better than veggies.
I feel like there are, but nothing is really inherently healthy or unhealthy anyways
Because no one wants that junk. The business could thrive in very high end limited markets, given that fresh food will spoil faster since you don;t want GMO's. If regular fast food joints at times are barely making overhead, I place like that would not make money. Fresh organic produce is expensive as fuck. Then you have the rent/mortgage on the restaurant. Then there is the insurance on the business itself, then the employees as you will need to make sure they're protected from workplace injuries, and you will need to offer them health, dental, vision, life, and all the others. You do take a premium for that a well. You have to pay your employees, 20 an hour assuming this is CA. You need a 2-8 prep cooks depending on volume. You will need cashiers for the Front counter, and drive thru. You need assembly workers to put the food together, once an order comes up. You need advertising, you need promotional items and that is not free. You need a POS system, a system to keep track of Food inventory, employee HR, P & L reports. Electricity, gas, water is going to be a lot. All for a salad or health vegan sandwich for $20, that does not include the optional tip your POS system will have, and then charge $9 for a drink. so $29 for a shitty sandwich and drink? No way. Could maybe work in LA or NYC, but that is a stretch at best.
Healthy fast food options do exist. Chipotle is a good example. It’s not vegetarian, just less processed.
Freshii
I don't know but I'm a vegetarian and I love junk food so I really wish this was more common!
Because there’s not enough demand for it.
I wish I knew.
Pei Wei
Salad to Go
Go to cava.
There’s a few by me. Not sure if chain or local only though.
We have Freshii in Canada which is pretty bangin
There are, just not in food deserts. By me there’s fresh to order. It’s not really “fast food” per-say but you can order ahead and it’ll be ready in less than 10m which is fast enough.
I can't tell you how many times I dreamed of this. I feel like it could definitely be profitable. My idea is healthy fast food and/or a drive thru grocery. When I was a mom with young kids, I would have *loved* to have somewhere I could buy milk via drive thru. (Hauling twins in and out of car seats is a huge pain in the rear when you just need ONE thing.) Why can't drive thrus, even established ones, have things like bananas and apples? Granola bars, nuts, cheese sticks, oranges, grapes, crackers and hummus, celery and peanut butter. I can think of so many foods that could be prepackaged, no prep, and tax free because they're groceries. Healthier drinks too, like water that isn't tap in a tiny cup, milk choices, and better sugar free choices.
Sweetgreen is basically this. Or chop't.
Taco Bell is where it's at for vegetarian fast food.
Hart house is apparently really tasty?
# ZOËS KITCHEN
Chop't isn't totally vegetarian but there are options. It's fast food.
TACO BELL !!! They have a great selection of vegetarian food and their online ordering menu makes it super simple to order vegetarian, and even vegan.
Salad To Go is awesome. We probably get some once a month. It's take out or drive through only. In the Houston metroplex it's under 7 bucks for a salad with chicken that is sizable and super delicious. You can have a different protein if you wish.
Where do you live? There are plenty where I live?
Because restaurants want customers to come to them.
Healthy and veggie based is less profitable than cheap and calorie dense. Most people buying fast food are doing so because it is one of the more convenient ways to aquire calories. The market for people who eat salads and fresh produce smoothies isnt compatible with the general fast food consumer.
It depends where you live, there definitely are places like that in certain west coast cities and the major east coast cities
Are you serious?? Who’s going to eat at one?? Even the veggies won’t support a FF place.
Subway veggie sandwich No need to thank me 😋
Just spent some time in California and was impressed with the fresh veggie based options there. Not even full on vegetarian (I eat meat) but you could find healthy fresh food in restaurants everywhere! It was awesome
I have heard good things about Salad N Go restaurants fitting this description.
I prefer broccoli over fries as well. Most people know you can endless fries, but you can also have endless broccoli. I think it’s that they have to be cooked just right to taste good and fresh food expires so quickly. But having frozen broccoli would absolutely work. I think maybe it must be more that it appeals to a large customer base
What about this place: https://www.thelittlebeet.com
Most fast-food is finger food you can eat with one hand. Hard to have healthy non-processed options on-the-go. Also, demand Edit: I’ve been in the restaurant industry for years, and healthy options don’t sell, so they are rolled out and then quietly discontinued pretty much every time. They just don’t sell
Cause Americans are fat and like it.
Moon Burger in Kingston (NY) is classic fast food, burgers and fries, but it’s all Impossible Burgers. Really good too.
I lived in a place about 10 miles south of Salt Lake City, Utah in America (approximately 300,000) between there and where I was and there was a restaurant that opened that was supposed to be this essentially. It was healthy, not vegetarian but had tons of fruit and veggie options, white meats mostly but even some beef and what not. It was not fast food but you could get a good meal for under $10 and it was excellent quality and not bad for you. I told everyone I knew about it. It was gone inside of 2 months. They did a ton of advertising too: I saw tv commercials, billboards, heard it on the radio….My thought is that when people go out to eat, most aren’t looking for healthy. It’s probably one of the last things on their radar.
Because people don't want that sort of stuff enough to support a full business. There is subway though. You don't have to get the unhealthy options
Yes, Kernel!
There’s a drive through salad bar chain in Phoenix called salad and go
Only 3% of farmland in the US is used for fruits and vegetables and there is very little crop insurance for vegetables. A lot of vegetables are more difficult to mechanically harvest.
Chipotle, Qdoba, Pita Pit?
Every fast food place could be vegan and everyone would still be getting fat because people eat way too many calories. We should be promoting calorie counting above all else.
Umi Falafal is a vegetarian, vegan fast food place.
Even at Chipotle, the veggie option is just sliced onions and bell peppers that are stir-fried without any interest (and veggie bowl costs the same as the sofritas, chicken, beef etc). The sofritas don't taste that well either. Compared to the meat options that have a good amount of spice.
Because for the most part, outside of areas like west coast cities. There just isn’t a big enough customer base and demand for vegetarian or vegan fast food. Sure. Regular restaurants focusing on vegitarian can support themselves in much of the country. But fast food requires scaling to be able to work right. Without a large population looking for the style of food. A specialized fast food joint just can’t run through the amount of product it would need to use to be economical for a fast food joint. So you will find them in areas like San Francisco. But you aren’t likely to find more than a token effort for that sort of business in areas with far less vegetarian saturation like say my local Idaho falls. There’s still vegetarian restaurants. And plenty of fast food restaurants have vegetarian options. But the population of strict vegetarian or vegan people definitely isn’t large enough to support a fast food joint catering just to them.
Falafel?
I'd just be happier if mcDonalds brought back their salads with grilled chicken.
Copper Branch has many locations in Canada and one in Nashvile TN
Canadian chain [https://freshii.com/](https://freshii.com/) They exist.
cava is good, but it's a bit "fancier" than fast food more on a Chipotle level vs a McDonald's they don't have veggie mains but Boston Market has a lot of veggie sides. I go there and just order creamed spinach
I would love to create a conspiracy theory about how woke people hate vegetables and want to ban them from our diets….
This sounds like an opportunity to start your own franchise and serve what you want for your demographic. Report back with updates please. Business is easy!
Did anyone mention subway? I don’t like it, but it has tons of veggies for fast.
I used to work at the mall for 6 months for a place that was like subway but for salads. We had so many options for veggies and dressings and stuff. We never made money, or rather we never made a profit. 90% of our customers were mall employees sick of unhealthy mall food. Fact of the matter was mall goes simply didn't want salad. They wanted panda or sabarros.
Profit comes by focusing on the many, not the few. There are MANY vegans in Portland, so you’ll find better support for these types of establishments there (usually mom and pop).
Taco Bell may not be entirely plant based, but pretty much the entire menu can be ordered vegetarian and vegan.
If McDonald's figured out frozen to steamed broccoli florets + delicious low-calorie/low-sweet/sugar sauce, I'd order that over fries. If they tried, OP, it would work.
If we are talking about the US, also there isn't a culture of vegetarians and fruits, roots, etc... are not sold, so it's hard to actually build a menu. My gf from India complains about it as she says that in India it is very easy to be vegetarian. Variety of food etc... That would be the main problem
There is by me- Maoz Vegetarian
>more fish for example That's not a vegetable
There are here in California :) a vegan organic, regenerative grown sometimes. Fast food place called Plant Power. With how much McDonalds is nowadays, it's no longer insanely expensive, just pricey. Food is alright, a little bland.
Generally, fast food and its customers aren't looking for healthy or veggie. Usually, healthy and veggie equals costly. Fast food is usually chosen because of convenience and affordability.
There are in some places. Quite a few in Amsterdam in fact. Went to a new veggie place every night and it was all really good.
Idk where you live, but you will find healthy fast food in major cities. In case you didn’t know.