Does Hardee’s have vegetarian options? A few, but not a dedicated meatless entrée. It’s a beef, pork, and chicken chain. Your Hardee’s vegetarian options are sides, a build-your-own salad, and bread with condiments. The chain briefly had the Beyond Burger and Beyond Sausage around 2019 and 2020, but both are gone now with no plant-based replacement. For more meatless restaurant guides, start at What’s Vegetarian.
A Quick Look at Hardees
Hardee’s started in Greenville, North Carolina, where founder Wilber Hardee opened the first location on September 3, 1960. The chain grew up around charbroiled burgers and a big Southern breakfast, and it’s stayed close to those roots ever since. North Carolina still has more Hardee’s than any other state, with roughly 204 locations, and the brand remains concentrated across the Southeast and Midwest.
Today Hardee’s runs somewhere between about 1,560 and 1,625 U.S. locations, depending on which tracker you check. It became a subsidiary of CKE Restaurants in 1997, the same parent company that owns its West Coast sibling, Carl’s Jr. CKE has been majority-owned by Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, since 2013. The two sibling brands share a nearly identical menu, and some Hardee’s locations also carry a Tex-Mex “Red Burrito” sub-menu, which matters a lot for meatless eaters.
Hardees Vegetarian Options: What to Order
The table below sorts the realistic Hardees vegetarian options by whether they work for lacto-ovo vegetarians and whether they’re vegan. We’ve marked items vegan only when the recipe is confirmed animal-product-free, and flagged anything disputed. Remember that the Red Burrito menu isn’t at every location.
| Menu Item | Vegetarian | Vegan |
|---|---|---|
| Beans, Rice & Cheese Burrito (Red Burrito) | ✅ | ❌ (order no cheese) |
| Side Salad (with cheddar) | ✅ | ❌ (order no cheese) |
| Natural-Cut French Fries | ✅ | ⚠️ shared fryer |
| Hash Rounds (breakfast) | ✅ | ⚠️ shared fryer |
| Crispy Curls | ✅ | ⚠️ shared fryer |
| Chips & Salsa (Red Burrito) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Grits (breakfast) | ✅ | ⚠️ disputed |
| Sourdough bread / Small Seeded Bun / Hot Dog Bun / Flour Tortilla | ✅ | ✅ (ask for no butter/Whirl) |
| Green Beans (where offered) | ✅ | ⚠️ check prep |
| Buttermilk Ranch dressing | ✅ | ❌ dairy |
| Low Fat Italian dressing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Beer-Battered Onion Rings | ✅ | ❌ whey |
| Beyond Burger / Beyond Sausage | ❌ discontinued | ❌ discontinued |
The Burrito and Salad: Your Closest Thing to a Meal
If your Hardee’s carries the Red Burrito menu, the Beans, Rice & Cheese Burrito is the most meal-like vegetarian pick on the board. It’s refried beans, Mexican rice, cheese, and salsa in a flour tortilla, and it’s vegetarian as-is. One caveat worth knowing: the allergen guides don’t confirm whether the refried beans are lard-free or the Mexican rice is made without chicken broth. Both are common hidden-animal-ingredient spots across the fast-food industry, so if that matters to you, ask your location or check Hardee’s allergen info before treating the burrito as strictly vegetarian or vegan.
The Side Salad is the other reliable option. It comes with iceberg lettuce, red onion, tomato, and cheddar, and it’s vegetarian out of the box. For dressing, you’ve got Buttermilk Ranch (contains dairy, fine for vegetarians) or Low Fat Italian (vegan-friendly). The salad’s a light pick on its own, so pair it with fries or a burrito if you want to leave full.
Sides and Breakfast Potatoes
Hardee’s does potatoes well, and most of them are meatless by recipe. The Natural-Cut French Fries are fried in vegetable oil (canola or soybean) with no animal-derived ingredients in the recipe itself. At breakfast you’ve got Hash Rounds, and the Crispy Curls round out the seasoned-potato lineup. All three are vegetarian, and on paper they’re plant-based too.
Here’s the big asterisk: those fried potatoes share a fryer with non-vegan items, including breaded chicken and the Beer-Battered Onion Rings, which contain whey. If you’re a strict vegan or avoiding cross-contact, that shared oil is the thing to know about before you order. Other sides worth a mention are Chips & Salsa from the Red Burrito menu (vegetarian and vegan), Grits at breakfast (vegetarian, with vegan status disputed between sources), and Green Beans where they’re offered, though we couldn’t confirm whether they’re prepared with butter at the restaurant level.
Bread, Condiments, and DIY Sandwiches
There’s no vegetarian protein sandwich at Hardee’s, so a “veggie burger” here is really lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle on a bun. That said, the breads give you something to build on. The sourdough bread, Small Seeded Bun, Hot Dog Bun, and Flour Tortilla are all listed dairy-free and egg-free, so they work for a do-it-yourself sandwich. One catch: some locations brush buns with “Whirl,” a butter-flavored topping that contains milk. If you want your bread fully dairy-free, ask for no butter or no Whirl.
For condiments, plenty are vegan-friendly. Reach for these to dress up your order:
- Ketchup, Mustard, and Picante Sauce
- BBQ Sauce, Smoky BBQ Sauce, and Buffalo Sauce
- Strawberry Jam and Grape Jelly
- Lemon Juice and Hot Sauce
- Honey (skip this one if you’re a strict vegan)
The ones to avoid for vegan eating contain egg: Mayonnaise, Honey Mustard, “Honey Q,” and Tartar Sauce. Those four are still lacto-ovo vegetarian, so they’re fine if egg isn’t a concern for you.
What’s Vegan at Hardees?
Vegan eating at Hardee’s is all about sides plus customization, since there’s no official plant-based product on the menu in 2026. Your best meal-like vegan pick is the Beans & Rice Burrito ordered with no cheese, leaving you the tortilla, refried beans, Mexican rice, and salsa, but only where the Red Burrito menu exists. After that, build a no-cheese Side Salad with Low Fat Italian dressing instead of Buttermilk Ranch. Round it out with Natural-Cut French Fries, Hash Rounds, Crispy Curls, or Chips & Salsa, and you’ve got a workable plant-based order.
What to avoid is just as important. The burrito and salad both come with cheese by default, so you have to ask for none. The fries, hash rounds, and crispy curls all ride a shared fryer with chicken and the whey-containing onion rings, so cross-contact is real. Skip the Beer-Battered Onion Rings entirely (whey), the egg-based sauces (mayo, honey mustard, Honey Q, tartar), and Buttermilk Ranch. Treat Grits as a question mark since sources disagree on whether they contain dairy, and confirm the burrito beans and rice locally before counting them as strictly vegan.
Special Dietary Requirements and Allergies
Cross-contact is the headline issue at Hardee’s for anyone avoiding animal products. The fryer is shared across fries, hash rounds, crispy curls, breaded chicken, and Beer-Battered Onion Rings, so even items that are plant-based by recipe pick up contact with meat and dairy. If you have a dairy allergy, watch for the “Whirl” butter topping on buns and breads, the whey in the onion rings, and the default cheese on the burrito and salad. For egg allergies, steer clear of mayonnaise, honey mustard, Honey Q, and tartar sauce.
A few things we couldn’t verify from the allergen guides, so confirm them at your location if they matter: whether the refried beans are lard-free, whether the Mexican rice uses chicken broth, the exact vegan status of grits and any peach dessert, and how green beans are prepared. The cheddar’s rennet type (animal versus microbial) also wasn’t specified, which only matters to strict vegetarians. When in doubt, ask for the current allergen guide at the restaurant or on the Hardee’s site before you order.
Tips for Vegetarians at Hardees
Use these ordering moves to get the most out of a Hardee’s stop:
- Check whether your location has the Red Burrito menu first. That’s where the Beans & Rice Burrito and Chips & Salsa live, and it’s the difference between a meal and a pile of sides.
- Always specify “no cheese” if you want the burrito or Side Salad to be vegan. Both come with cheese by default.
- Pick Low Fat Italian dressing over Buttermilk Ranch for a vegan salad. Ranch contains dairy.
- Ask for “no butter, no Whirl” on any bun or bread if you’re avoiding dairy. Some locations brush on a milk-based topping.
- Know the shared fryer affects the fries, hash rounds, and crispy curls. If you’re avoiding cross-contact, the potato sides aren’t a safe bet.
- Skip the egg-based sauces (mayo, honey mustard, Honey Q, tartar) for vegan, and skip the Beer-Battered Onion Rings, which contain whey.
- Confirm the refried beans and Mexican rice with staff if strict, since the allergen guides don’t address possible lard or chicken broth.
Does Hardee’s Have Vegetarian Options? Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion
Hardee’s won’t be your favorite stop as a vegetarian or vegan, and that’s worth saying plainly. There’s no meatless main, the Beyond options are gone, and your meal comes down to the Red Burrito menu, a no-cheese salad, fried potatoes with a shared-fryer caveat, and DIY bread. Knowing the watch-outs (default cheese, egg in the mayo and honey mustard, possible Whirl butter, whey in the onion rings, and unverified lard or broth in the burrito beans and rice) is what keeps you from an accidental slip. For more help eating out, see our guide to eating vegetarian and vegan at restaurants and browse all our restaurant guides. You might also like our breakdowns of vegetarian options at Carl’s Jr., the sibling brand, and Taco Bell for more Tex-Mex meatless picks.
