Fast Foods and Treats We Lost in 2022

The calendar has rolled over to another year, so it's time to look back on what we lost in 2022. There may be some fast-food favorites or snacks on this list that you'll mourn, but let's face it — this is fast food we're talking about, and plenty of consumers will be thrilled if they never hear the word McRib again. You might be surprised that some of these foods are gone since they quietly disappeared from menus, but some came with announcements and uproar. Here are the items that the chain-restaurant giants chose to axe last year plus a couple of nostalgic snacks you may never eat again.

Related: Fast-Food Items Overdue for a Comeback

The chicken sandwich wars never cease, but Burger King decided to remove its weirdly named Ch'King from the fight in spring 2021. It was only on the menu for about a year, and though many consumers enjoyed the King's take on premium chicken sandwiches, they were hated by employees for being a hassle to prepare.

Related: The Best (and Worst) Fast-Food Spicy Chicken Sandwiches

Fried chicken fans also lost the Original Chicken Crispers at Chili's last year. The tenders were coated in a puffy batter, and lots of customers had a nostalgic love for them. But never fear, the crispy and honey chipotle versions of Crispers aren't going anywhere. It seems the original version just wasn't popular enough anymore.

Related: Fast-Food Copycat Recipes You Can Make in an Air Fryer

Much to the dismay of fans everywhere, Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco, a beloved ice cream truck treat, in July. The company cited a spike in demand across its product line that required some culling, and for some reason, thought the Choco Taco was a good candidate to axe. There's hope that it will come back, though the company says that it may be years from now, if at all.

Wendy's Frosty machines can dispense two flavors. The original chocolate has always been available, and vanilla was added more recently. Vanilla was pushed aside in 2022 in favor of limited-time flavors, including strawberry during the summer. It ended up becoming the favorite flavor of many Frosty fans, and when it was switched out for the pink peppermint holiday flavor, many were despondent. Maybe it'll come back next summer.

We're all used to the McRib going away and coming back every year like clockwork. But when it came back in October, McDonald's implied that it was the last time customers would be seeing it. Many were dubious that McDonald's was being truthful, including us, but maybe the fast-food giant will wait a couple of years before bringing it back once again to an even more excited fanbase.

The Egg White Delight debuted in 2013 to, well, the delight of consumers searching for healthier fast-food breakfast options. It started disappearing from menus a few years ago in areas where it wasn't popular and was removed entirely in 2022. The regular Egg McMuffin tastes much better and is fairly healthy, so it's not a huge loss.

Remember in the 1990s when "healthy" meant low fat and full of sugar? SnackWells cookies filled that terrible niche, and after 30 years of baking up a whole assortment of snacks reminiscent of plastic, SnackWell's called it quits. Who on earth was buying them anymore?

Burger King quietly dropped ice cream sundaes from its menu in early 2022. They weren't selling well — neither was chocolate milk, apparently — so it made sense to give them the axe. No one goes to BK for a sundae, anyway. But you can still get shakes, soft serve, cookies, and those weird pie slices.

First sundaes, then salads. If you're looking for a relatively healthy option for lunch at BK, it's going to be harder to find one now that salads are gone. With 2022's lettuce shortages and the unlikelihood that consumers seek ou fast-food restaurants for healthier fare, it's not a huge surprise.

McDonald's also ditched salads in 2022. Healthy options aren't why consumers go to fast-food joints, so getting rid of those outliers when inflation and labor shortages are in high gear seems like a wise business decision.

Did you know that there are — or were — two different sweet onion sauces at Subway? There's plain sweet onion, and there's sweet onion teriyaki. The sub chain discontinued the regular old sweet onion sauce in 2022, much to the dismay of a small but vocal minority of customers. 

One casualty of Subway's menu restructuring in mid-2022 was the oven-roasted chicken breast patty. It was a single, anemic-looking patty with painted-on grill marks that somehow made it look even more unnatural. No one seems to miss it much, especially considering sliced chicken is still available. 

Hot honey is one of the biggest food trends of the last couple years. Wendy's jumped on that bandwagon with its new hot honey chicken sandwich in February. It came with a packaged hot honey sauce for topping the sandwich or for dipping chicken nuggets. But the chain discontinued it in fall, and once the supply was exhausted, it was gone for good.

The last nail in the coffin for healthier options at McDonald's — after losing salads, the Egg White Delight, and grilled chicken sandwiches in 2020 — was discontinuing the fruit and yogurt parfait. We can no longer sprinkle those crunchy granola bits on that little cup of yogurt and questionable-quality frozen fruit.

This one is truly bizarre: Starbucks stopped selling a sandwich only five days after debuting it. Consumers reported on social media that the chicken, maple butter, and egg sandwich was making them sick, and while the chain denied that it had anything to do with common foodborne illnesses like salmonella, it did instruct employees to discard the product and not let anyone eat it. Weird.