The Fast Food Chain With The Hands-Down Most Affordable Salads

For many of us, fast food salads are remarkable for the very same reason as diner lobster: We're honestly just surprised people order them. There's a very good reason why McDonald's stopped selling salads, after all, and if a behemoth like that doesn't think they're worth offering, people take it as a signal that getting a salad instead of a burger isn't the right call.

But here's the thing: Buying your salads elsewhere is going to cost you a lot of green. Getting one at Sweetgreens, for example, can set you back $15, while a plain Caesar salad at DC's Bourbon Steak starts at $20 without any protein. In Chowhound's taste test of eight fast food salads, every item cost less than $11, with the top-ranked one from Chick-fil-A starting at just $9.99 if you order online. As for the cheapest ones, you can find them at Southern fast food chain Bojangles, which offers its Chicken Supremes Salad at $7.10 and its Cajun Chicken Filet Salad at $7.19.

It's honestly a bit of a miracle that the chain is able to offer these salads at that price point. Vegetables don't keep as long as meat does, so they actually cost fast food restaurants a lot more money than they're worth. If you've ever wondered what happened to the salad bars at Wendy's and Burger King, you can bet economics played a huge role in their demise. That makes Bojangles even more of a rarity among fast food chains, and it should be known for its affordable salads as much as it is for its masterful, championship-worthy biscuits.

While Bojangles' salads were certainly the most affordable ones in our ranking, they were also unfortunately the worst-performing. The Chicken Supremes Salad, in particular, is a fast food salad we'd consider avoiding every time we go out. The veggies were incredibly lackluster, emphasized by an overabundance of limp lettuce dominating two cucumber slices and overripe, slightly bitter grape tomatoes. To be perfectly fair, the chicken that topped the salad was well-seasoned and crispy, but who buys a salad for the meat?

Depending on where you are, however, your mileage with the salads may vary. There are, after all, over 800 Bojangles locations in the country, and food quality can vary from store to store for a number of reasons. It's possible that the branch we based our taste test on just wasn't up to standard. Our methodology might have had a small impact as well; in the interests of standardization, we used a third-party ranch dressing to test all the salads with. One of the three dressings you can get with your Bojangles salad — House-made Ranch, Honey Dijon, or Light Balsamic Vinaigrette — might have been good enough to salvage things flavor-wise.

No amount of dressing can make limp veggies fresh again, however, so it might still be best to order the salad only if you're stuck at a Bojangles with friends who really love the place and there's nothing else on the menu you feel like eating. There's no guarantee that the salad will be any fresher than what we had, but there's also no guarantee that it won't. At the very least, it won't cost you too much.