6 Restaurant Chains That Only Use Frozen Meat

Plant-based diets may be on the rise, but the U.S. very much remains a nation of meat-eaters. It's thought that the average American eats 224.6 pounds of meat a year, with the vast majority of restaurant chains rushing to cater to our carnivorous appetites. But satiating said appetites doesn't come cheap. Supplying a nationwide chain with a constant supply of fresh meat is both a major expense and, in some cases, a logistical nightmare — hence why some companies choose not to do it altogether.

It's usually pretty easy to figure out which restaurant chains fall into this category. If a chain exclusively uses fresh meat (by which we mean not frozen), they tend to be loud and proud about this fact. Those who are a little bit more vague with their advertising are often those who opt to use pre-frozen meat for their menu items. There's nothing inherently wrong with doing so — after all, frozen meat lasts longer, is easier to standardize, and (most critically) costs less for restaurants to buy en masse. However, if you're someone who prefers to order the freshest, juiciest meat possible, these are the six chains you'll want to avoid.

Burger King's meat offerings have always stood out in a sea of fast food burgers due to the fact that Whoppers are flame-grilled (or, to be more accurate, flame-broiled) instead of being tossed onto the standard flat-top grill. It's this process that gives the Whopper its smoky, fresh-off-the-grill taste that makes it easy to forget that these are frozen beef patties cooked en masse.

While the restaurant has never outright declared that it uses frozen meat, the fact that there's no mention of "fresh" anywhere on its website in regards to said meat is pretty telling. Considering the scarcity of restaurants that 100% use fresh meat, anywhere that does will usually make a song and a dance about doing so. As per former employees, raw patties are delivered frozen and then cooked for the first time at the restaurant. This isn't all hearsay; one Burger King worker previously shared behind the scenes glimpses at the inner workings of its kitchens on TikTok, where he showed stacks of frozen beef patties waiting to be passed through the broiler.

Conversely, the same worker revealed that Burger King's Ch'King sandwich involved hand-breading fresh, raw chicken. However, this sandwich was sadly axed in 2022, with employees claiming that it was simply too laborious and time-consuming to make. It was instead replaced with the Royal Crispy Chicken, which reportedly reverted back to frozen (and easier to prep) chicken breast.

Jack in the Box has put a lot of work into diversifying its offerings in recent years, having introduced a line of smash burgers (known as Smashed Jacks) in early 2024. These proved so popular that the fast food chain sold 70,000 units in just one day, then totally sold out of said burgers in two weeks. While we may not have personally agreed on defining the Smashed Jack as a smash burger, it received rave reviews from some for its flavor and texture — even its patties are made with frozen beef.

That's right, according to employees, the Smashed Jack — plus all other burgers on the Jack in the Box menu — is made with a frozen, pre-seasoned patty. The only difference between the Smashed Jack's patty and the regular patties used in other burgers is the fact that the edges are thinner and crispier. Jack in the Box doesn't explicitly claim to use frozen meat on its website, but considering it only vaguely mentions "100% seasoned beef" and makes no claims to using fresh meat, it feels safe to assume that this is the case. None of the other meat options from Jack in the Box, including its chicken sandwiches and tacos, are touted on the website as using fresh meat, either.

Panda Express touts itself as America's favorite Chinese restaurant, selling over 110 million pounds of its Orange Chicken per year. The often imitated but never quite duplicated dish (although a DIY three-ingredient orange chicken recipe can get you pretty close) was invented back in 1987, when executive chef Andy Kao, inspired by the citrus in Hawaii while opening the state's first Panda Express, decided to combine fried chicken with the now-iconic sweet and tangy sauce. A lot has changed about the Panda Express Orange Chicken since then, including the fact that it no longer uses bone-in chicken and instead uses frozen meat.

As rival chain Pei Wei highlighted in an advertising campaign back in 2018, Panda Express uses frozen, processed pieces of dark meat chicken. Employees have previously explained that the meat is delivered frozen, with a couple of days to thaw it out before it's cooked in batches. Unlike the meat, however, the veggies apparently come fresh, with the rice also cooked on the same day that it's served.

First founded as a root beer stand outside a log-cabin steakhouse known as Top Hat Drive-In in 1953, Sonic Drive-In has pivoted over the 70 years to focus on the likes of burgers, hot dogs, and slushies. Anything that contains meat is made with frozen meat, as per the behind the scenes glimpses at the cooking process shared by employees on TikTok.

The Sonic Drive-In website omits any mention of fresh or non-frozen meat, which makes a lot of sense once you see the videos. As per these inside looks at the Sonic kitchen, its burgers — such as the Triple SONIC Smasher and the SuperSONIC Double Cheeseburger — are made with beef patties taken directly from the freezer. These are tossed onto the grill, where they're combined with fresh veggies and any other extras. The same goes for its chicken menu items like the Crispy Tenders and the Crispy Chicken Sandwich. Social media videos from the kitchen show bags of frozen tenders, which are then deep-fried.

Despite the name, IHOP is so much more than just pancakes. Breakfast foods may be its specialty, but it's become much more of a general diner in recent years, with the likes of steak, salmon, and shrimp creeping onto the menu. There was even a time when IHOP wanted us to call it IHOb to recognize its newfound focus on meat — a publicity stunt that ultimately helped the chain sell four times more burgers, with 500,000 units ordered per week at the campaign's peak. Popular though this meat may have been, nobody really goes to IHOP expecting gourmet cuisine, which is why it should come as no surprise that it's apparently frozen.

In 2018, IHOP announced that it was switching from frozen patties to ... well, other frozen patties. The key difference is that the current iteration comes in large, frozen masses that are thawed and then shaped into patties. According to IHOP employees, other dishes arrive just as icy. Its T-bone steaks allegedly arrive frozen in boxes of 40, which are then thawed and cooked on the flattop. The more you know.

If you've ever passed on buying White Castle sliders at the grocery store and instead opted to order the "real" thing in-store, you might be surprised to know that the two are more similar than you'd think. The fast food business — which had its start in Wichita, Kansas, back in 1921 and is often dubbed the world's oldest hamburger chain — reportedly uses the exact same patties for both, produced at three manufacturing plants. That's why you won't find any subtle brags about using fresh meat on the White Castle website (and why all of its sliders look so uniform in size).

Any sliders ordered in an actual White Castle are cooked directly from frozen. In the 1950s, one employee had the genius idea of inserting five holes into the iconic square-shaped patties so they could be cooked without flipping, which is still how they're prepped to this day. Before then, the patties were cooked in balls, topped with diced onions, and then flattened and flipped on the grill. However, this method ultimately proved too slow and inefficient, hence the switch. If you want to make store-bought sliders taste like those eaten fresh from the restaurant, combine them with cheese, onions, and pickles, et voila: DIY White Castle.