Which Fast Food Chains Use Real, Whole Eggs?

Fast food chains aren't known for hand-crafting meals from scratch; they get your food to you hot and fast by taking shortcuts, like frying items straight out of the freezer (even sit-down restaurants are guilty of making menu items from frozen foods from time to time). So it's a nice surprise when one of these chains actually takes the time in the mornings to crack a real, whole egg on the griddle and cook it just like you would at home — and they might not be restaurants you'd expect.

There are actually two fast food chains that do this, starting with Wendy's. Not only is it cracking fresh eggs in its kitchens, but Wendy's also uses eggs that are only sourced from cage-free hens. In a surprising twist, White Castle also fresh-cracks eggs for its breakfast sandwiches, like the Breakfast Slider and the Belgian Waffle Slider. While the eggs are cooked in an oil that contains butter flavor (which adds a variety of other ingredients), fresh cracked eggs are still the main ingredient in many of its breakfast offerings.

We left off some heavy-hitters in the fast food chain breakfast world, for the simple fact that while they do crack whole eggs for some of their items, they use bagged or frozen egg products for others. The biggest brand that does this is McDonald's, which uses whole, fresh-cracked eggs for its Egg McMuffin sandwiches only.

So, for something like the biscuit sandwiches or McGriddles where the eggs are folded (a technique you can achieve at home), those arrive at the store pre-formed and frozen. (If your heart is set on a McGriddle with a real egg, though, you can just ask; request a round egg or shell egg when you place your order at the counter or drive-thru, and they'll be happy to accommodate you). Two other fast-food chains, Whataburger, and Jack in the Box, also crack whole eggs for their breakfast sandwiches, but then resort to egg products (in both cases, bagged egg liquid) elsewhere on the menu, like if they offer scrambled eggs as a side.

On the other end of the spectrum are the fast food chains that don't crack any whole eggs at all for their breakfast items. These include Taco Bell, Starbucks, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Chick-Fil-A, and Panera. Taco Bell has made it their purpose to source whole, cage-free eggs in the mixture that arrives at its restaurants, but along with them come eight other ingredients, including the thickening agents and emulsifiers xanthan gum and guar gum. In fact, additives come in many of the egg mixtures for chains that don't use whole eggs.

Panera actually did once offer whole eggs, cooked on-site with a runny yolk, for some of its breakfast sandwiches — it even petitioned the FDA in 2018 to require fast food companies to label their egg products to better reflect the fact that they weren't serving up whole, fresh-cracked eggs — but it no longer does. The fast-casual chain switched over to using all pre-mixed egg products in 2023 (you can upgrade your Panera breakfast sandwiches in other ways), though the ingredient list for this is a lot shorter than other mixtures: Just whole eggs and citric acid to help them keep their color.