Looking for Cicis vegetarian options? You’ve got a whole all-you-can-eat buffet to graze, and a big share of it never sees meat. Cheese and veggie pizzas come out hot all day. The salad bar is self-serve, and the dessert pizzas are fair game. Around $9.99 a person buys a vegetarian a real meal here. Below, we walk through what to pile on your plate, what to skip, and the one thing to ask your server before you start. And if you ever wondered what about the vegetarians, this buffet is on your side.
A Quick Look at Cicis
Cicis opened on September 14, 1985, in Plano, Texas. Joe Croce and Mike Cole built it around one idea: unlimited pizza for a low flat price. Franchising started in 1987, and the model caught fire. By 2005 Cicis was the fastest-growing pizza chain in the country, with more than 500 locations.
The buffet that made Cicis also made it fragile. When COVID-19 shut down shared serving lines in 2020, the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021. It came out the same year under new owner D&G Investors, and it stays privately held today. As of 2026 Cicis runs about 274 restaurants across the United States. The 2015 rebrand dropped the apostrophe and added a “Beyond Pizza” line, a nod to the wings, pasta, salad, and desserts that share the buffet.
Cicis Vegetarian Options: What to Order
Short answer: cheese pizza, veggie pizza, the Mac & Cheese pizza, most of the salad bar, plain pasta, and the dessert pizzas all skip the meat. Buffet format is the real win here. You see every pizza before it hits your plate, and a quick word to the staff gets a fresh meat-free pie when the line runs thin. Here’s how the common items shake out.
| Menu Item | Vegetarian | Vegan |
|---|---|---|
| Cheese Pizza | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy cheese) |
| Veggie Pizza (olives, peppers, mushrooms, onions) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy cheese) |
| Mac & Cheese Pizza | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy) |
| Build-your-own with vegetable toppings | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Yes if no cheese, no garlic butter |
| Salad bar (lettuce, tomato, carrots, cucumber, chickpeas) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes* |
| Croutons | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy) |
| Pasta with red sauce | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Ask (order without cheese) |
| Pasta with Alfredo sauce | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy) |
| Cinnamon rolls / dessert pizza | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy, butter) |
| Fudge brownies | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy, egg) |
| Chicken wings | ❌ No (meat) | ❌ No (meat) |
| Garlic butter crust topping | ✅ Yes | ❌ No (dairy) |
Mark anything you didn’t watch come out of the oven as a question for the staff. They build pies all day and will tell you what’s on the line.
Vegetarian Pizzas on the Buffet
Three pizzas do most of the work for a vegetarian. Classic cheese runs about 190 calories a medium slice and never carries meat. Veggie piles on black olives, green peppers, mushrooms, and onions for around 180 calories a slice. Then there’s the Mac & Cheese pizza, macaroni and cheese baked on a garlic-butter crust, pure comfort with no meat at all.
Skip the Supreme (red onions and peppers, then pepperoni, beef, and Italian sausage piled on top) and the Buffalo Chicken. Seeing only meat pizzas when you walk up? Ask for a fresh cheese or veggie pie. Cicis bakes to order more than people expect, and a polite ask usually gets you a hot one in a few minutes.
One quiet perk of the buffet is portion freedom. A single slice at most pizza chains locks you into one topping choice. Here you can take a wedge of cheese, a wedge of veggie, and a slice of the Mac & Cheese pizza on the same trip and decide what you actually want. That’s a real edge when you’re feeding a mixed table and only one person eats meat-free.
Build Your Own Vegetarian Pizza
Want full control? The take-out and order-ahead menu lets you build a pizza from scratch. Start with any crust: Traditional Round, Thin Crust Flatbread, Deep Dish, or Stuffed Crust. Then choose a meat-free sauce. Red sauce is the safe base. Alfredo, Spinach Alfredo, Mac & Cheese, and Zesty Ranch work for vegetarians too, since they’re dairy-based, not meat-based.
For toppings, the vegetable list is solid: black olives, green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeños, mushrooms, pineapple, and red onion. Stack them however you like. One sauce to watch is Creamy Buffalo, which contains chicken, so it isn’t vegetarian. Everything else on the vegetable side is fair game.
A few combinations are worth stealing. Red sauce with mushrooms, green peppers, and red onion is the classic veggie build. Spinach Alfredo with mushrooms makes a richer white pizza. Pineapple and jalapeño on red sauce gives you the sweet-heat thing without any meat. Build-your-own also lets you double the cheese or go light, which the buffet pies never let you control.
Salad Bar, Pasta, and Sides
Quiet hero alert: the salad bar carries vegetarians here. Crisp lettuce comes with tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, red cabbage, beets, broccoli, banana peppers, garbanzo beans, and olives, plus dressings on the side. Build a real meal out of it, not just a token side. Croutons contain dairy, so they’re fine for vegetarians but not vegans.
Pasta sits on the buffet too, usually with a red marinara or an Alfredo. Both are meat-free. If you’re vegan, ask for pasta with red sauce and no cheese, and know that availability varies by location. The pasta rotation isn’t on every buffet every day, so check the line before you count on it.
Desserts at the Buffet
Dessert is unlimited, and almost all of it is vegetarian. Dessert pizzas, cinnamon rolls, and fudge brownies all skip meat. Each one contains dairy and egg, so call them vegetarian but not vegan. Crowd favorite goes to the cinnamon roll dessert pizza, warm cinnamon and icing on the same dough as the savory pies. Save room. Your buffet price already paid for it.
What’s Vegan at Cicis?
Vegan eating at Cicis takes a little planning, but it’s doable. All three base doughs, Original, Thin Crust Flatbread, and Deep Dish, are made without animal products. One catch trips people up: the garlic butter brushed on the crust by default, so ask for none. Order a build-your-own with red sauce, no cheese, and vegetable toppings, and you’ve got a vegan pizza.
Cicis does not offer vegan cheese, so a cheeseless veggie pizza is the play. On the salad bar, stick to the vegetables and use lite Italian or red wine vinegar, since the croutons and some creamy dressings contain dairy. The bruschetta tomatoes contain dairy too, so leave those off a vegan plate.
Special Dietary Requirements and Allergies
A few things to flag before you eat. Garlic butter on the crust is dairy, and it goes on by default, so vegans and dairy-allergic diners should ask for none. Croutons and bruschetta tomatoes both contain dairy. Watch the Creamy Buffalo sauce too, since it contains chicken and is off the table for vegetarians even though it sounds like a topping.
Cross-contact is the bigger issue at a buffet. Shared serving utensils move between meat and meat-free pizzas, and the kitchen shares prep surfaces and fryers with chicken. If you’re strictly vegetarian or have a serious allergy, ask for a fresh pie made to order rather than pulling from the open line. Cicis has not published a certified gluten-free crust, so treat gluten-free as ask-the-manager, not assumed.
Rennet is the one item even careful vegetarians forget. Some mozzarella uses animal-derived rennet, and Cicis doesn’t publish which it uses. Most large pizza chains have moved to microbial rennet, but if that line matters to you, ask the manager rather than assume. The same goes for the dough conditioners, which can vary by supplier. None of this rules out a good meal here. It just means the buffet rewards a quick question over a guess.
Tips for Vegetarians at Cicis
- Ask for a fresh cheese or veggie pizza if the buffet line is mostly meat pies. They bake to order more than you’d guess.
- Build your own on the order-ahead menu when you want exact control over sauce and toppings.
- Treat the salad bar as a course, not a side. It’s the most reliable meat-free spread in the building.
- For vegan, say “no garlic butter, no cheese, red sauce” up front. That one sentence covers the defaults that trip people up.
- Skip the Creamy Buffalo sauce. It has chicken in it.
- Save buffet room for a dessert pizza. It’s included, and it’s vegetarian.
Conclusion
Cicis is an easy win for vegetarians. The all-you-can-eat buffet means you can see your food before it hits the plate, the cheese and veggie pizzas are always meat-free, and the salad bar and dessert pizzas round out a real meal for one flat price. Vegans need to ask for no garlic butter and no cheese, but the bones are there. For more on eating out without meat, read our guide to eating vegetarian and vegan at restaurants and browse all our restaurant guides. If you like a pizza buffet, see what’s meat-free at Pizza Inn, Shakey’s Pizza, and Mellow Mushroom.
