8 Restaurant Chains That Use Frozen Steaks, According To Former Employees

Calling steak a popular food is an understatement. According to the 2022–2023 Consumer Steak Report from Meats by Linz, which surveyed nearly 1,100 people in the U.S., 64% of respondents would include steak in their final meal.

When dining on the beefy favorite, there's no doubt that steakhouse steak generally tastes better than homemade, but not every steak you pay top dollar for at a restaurant is a fresh cut of meat. According to both former and current employees of some big restaurant chains, many dining brands use frozen steak when serving their patrons. If their claims are true, then the beef you're getting from your favorite restaurant, from the most popular cut of steak in America, the ribeye, to sirloin and every other cut in between, may very well be from the freezer, not freshly butchered.

There are various ways you can tell you're at a good steakhouse, and the quality of the meat is definitely key among them. When meat is fresh, i.e., unprocessed (and freezing is a form of processing), its color is brighter, and its texture is firmer, generally resulting in a juicier, more tender, and overall more appealing final plated entree. Freezing meat, on the other hand, reduces its quality and results in lost nutritional value as well. As a result of ice crystals freezing and thawing, the muscle cells in the meat can become damaged, and components like fat and protein can become oxidized. When you dine at your favorite restaurant, has your steak undergone this process before reaching your plate?

It's probably fair to assume that a restaurant specializing in pancakes might not be the best spot to find a fresh steak. A Reddit user, self-identified as a former IHOP cook, said the chain's steaks "come frozen in [boxes] of 40" and are thawed in a cooler before cooking. Additionally, a Quora poster who claimed to be a former IHOP manager stated it's not just the steaks but all of IHOP's meat that arrives frozen, adding that the T-bone steaks at their location were the most complained-about item by patrons because of their subpar taste.

IHOP doesn't officially divulge details about the condition its meat arrives in. But Centralized Supply Chain Services, the exclusive product purchasing agent for IHOP as well as Applebee's, states on its website that one of its key focuses is ensuring the restaurants receive "the lowest sustainable delivered prices" in terms of food products and other goods. Fresh, unfrozen steak definitely doesn't fit into that aim, as fresh meat is generally more expensive than frozen, especially in the bulk quantities a global restaurant chain requires. Using fresh beef also potentially elevates food waste expenses, as it has a much shorter shelf life — a few days as opposed to the months frozen steak can remain in a freezer.

These factors further make fresh steak less suitable for a restaurant built around breakfast items like pancakes, with only a handful of menu items containing the ingredient. A lower-volume dish, generally not ordered as frequently, would need a longer shelf life to account for smaller or sporadic ordering quantities.

While Applebee's has a much broader menu with more steak-based offerings than IHOP, it, too, is widely rumored to serve frozen steak. The chain has touted its steaks as being hand-cut and grilled to order, but no official mention is made about using fresh, unfrozen beef.

In a Quora post, a self-identified former Applebee's kitchen manager stated that while the steaks were indeed cut by hand during their time there, they first came in frozen as an entire loin. They had to be thawed before they could be "cut by staff."

Applebee's has previously highlighted its use of fresh, never-frozen burger patties across everything from press releases to TV commercials. However, that language, "fresh, never frozen," was dropped from a January 2026 news release announcing Applebee's new O-M-Cheeseburger, and the online menu descriptions of the sandwich and the brand's other burgers no longer mention using fresh beef as of January 2026. 

This, of course, raises suspicion that perhaps the chain has finally succumbed to the lower cost of frozen burgers — hardly surprising given ongoing, rampant inflation and climbing food costs. Surely, if the chain has made such a point of flaunting its use of fresh burger patties, it would certainly be shouting it from the rooftops if the steaks were unfrozen, too. The likelihood is therefore high that the rumors are true and the steaks do indeed come to the restaurants frozen.

Ruby Tuesday inadvertently confessed to its use of frozen steak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Via emails sent out to rewards program members in 2020, the chain announced it was opening its restaurants' pantries to customers who wanted to purchase bulk food items, thereby lessening their need to visit grocery stores in the midst of social distancing. Among the goods offered up for sale from Ruby Tuesday's kitchens, there were — you guessed it — cases of frozen steaks. The cases, priced at $251.69 for 84 6-ounce sirloins, reveal a per-steak cost of just $3.00. This is significantly lower than the menu price, further pulling back the curtain on the chain's use of bulk-frozen inventory.

Self-declared former employees have further attested to the frozen condition of the brand's meat. One Facebook user, stating they were formerly employed in a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, wrote that the chain's steaks are not only frozen but that various other food items are, too. They added that the cooks mash the steaks to cook them faster, and much of the restaurant's cuisine is heated in a microwave before being served.

Longstanding restaurant chain Cracker Barrel has come under fire in recent years for throwing out its traditionally used recipes, which once reflected home cooking, and turning to prepackaged, frozen foods instead. However, one Redditor wrote that the chain's Country Fried Steak has been delivered frozen for many years, long before those changes took place. In 2024, a separate Reddit poster who claimed to be a Cracker Barrel grill cook wrote that all of the brand's meats are frozen.

Big changes came to the Cracker Barrel restaurant brand when CEO Julie Masino came onboard in 2023. After Masino's appointment, the brand's restaurants reportedly began receiving trucked-in, frozen food. Employees have called out the company, including via a viral video posted on X in 2025, for having its restaurants serve microwaved food. Workers have compared Cracker Barrel's new approach to being exactly like fast food. Masino's previous experience was working as an executive for Taco Bell, which might explain the brand's pivot from scratch-made comfort to high-speed efficiency.

Waffle House is another diner chain that one probably shouldn't have high expectations of when ordering a steak (the name isn't Steak House, after all). The brand's menu page does claim to "sell the most T-bone steaks in the world," though, and the company has made a point of declaring its steaks to be exclusively USDA Choice grade (via Facebook), so maybe that does justify some elevated expectations. 

Either way, a self-identified former Waffle House employee stated on Reddit that the steaks served in the chain's restaurants arrive frozen. Another Redditor, claiming to be a Waffle House employee of 35 years, stated that employees are instructed to wrap steaks in plastic while they are frozen and keep them in a frozen condition as long as possible. 

As with IHOP, Waffle House is foremostly a breakfast spot, with only a handful of menu items featuring steak. So, practically speaking, stocking freshly butchered meat wouldn't be a reasonable or cost-effective choice.

On its main online menu, Waffle House lists both T-bone and sirloin steaks among its food offerings, and some locations offer Delmonico steak, as well. Whichever kind you opt for, it's likely that it was once frozen before reaching your table. 

If you're surprised to see this brand on the list, we get it — Texas Roadhouse prides itself on using fresh beef. In fact, the chain's website states: "Our steaks are always fresh, never frozen." Cuts of raw meat are also displayed in glass cases so diners can choose their own steak. But despite all that, there is actually one Texas Roadhouse cut that might be frozen.

According to a Redditor who appeared to be a former Texas Roadhouse employee, the porterhouse T-bone is the only cut "shipped in frozen." Another self-identified former employee explained the reason is that cutting that particular steak requires a specialized saw, which most locations don't have onsite (a claim backed by another user who claimed to have worked at various Texas Roadhouse locations). Consequently, the porterhouse T-bones are precut and shipped in, rather than being stocked raw and hand-cut in the restaurant like the chain's other offerings.

As with some of the other restaurants, stocking fresh steak would be an impractical choice for a large, international chain like Denny's, which largely made a name for itself as a breakfast spot. Denny's focus on low-cost dining is similarly at odds with the high price of fresh steak, making frozen cuts the more practical choice for the chain.

More than 90% of food service outlets use frozen foods (per the American Frozen Food Institute), so it's not exactly an uncommon practice. One Redditor, self-declared as a former employee of many years, posted that the majority of Denny's food (not just the meat) is delivered frozen, even produce like avocados. A Yelp reviewer stated they were once served a T-bone steak as a Denny's customer, and it was still frozen when brought to their table.

The use of frozen food in general is a big cost saver for restaurants. For instance, utilizing ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat frozen ingredients reduces labor costs, greatly cutting the need for prep-work and enabling restaurants to hire inexperienced workers at lower wages. In some job postings for Denny's cooks, the only requirement listed is being 18 or older — in other words, experience not needed. This fits with a streamlined approach of preparing frozen, ready-to-cook components rather than from-scratch food.

Among the steaks listed on its menu, Black Bear Diner offers New York steak, ranch steak, tri-tip, and chicken-fried steak, none of which are prepared from fresh cuts of meat, according to both former employees and customers. A Redditor self-identified as a former Black Bear Diner worker of 11 years stated that all of the chain's food items come either frozen or in the form of a powdered mix. "Nothing is made 'from scratch' there," they wrote.

Some online have stated that they ordered a medium-rare tri-tip at Black Bear Diner, only to be told by the server that the meat came not only prepackaged but precooked as well, meaning ordering a specific level of doneness wasn't possible. A self-identified truck driver posting on Yelp was told by wait staff that the restaurant's chicken-fried steaks were frozen, after which the poster decided to leave rather than ordering (but not before being charged more than $3 for a tiny to-go soda).

Black Bear Diner's website states that its 10-ounce New York steaks come from Meats by Linz, which does, indeed, sell frozen, prepackaged 10-ounce New York strip steaks by the case. In fact, the Meats by Linz website states that all of its Linz Heritage Angus beef, which encompasses all of the brand's steaks, is immediately frozen after being cut. Black Bear Diner's website doesn't specify where its other steaks are sourced, but the evidence is strong that wherever they come from, they likely arrive frozen, too.