MOD Pizza stands for “Made on Demand” Pizza. It’s like the Subway of pizza places. You get to choose your pizza toppings from a buffet like that, and the pizzas are done fast... But how does MOD Pizza hold up for vegans like us?
Vegan options at MOD Pizza:
- Vegan Maddy Pizza
- Vegan Lucy Sunshine Pizza
- Vegan Dillon James Pizza
- Original Crust
- Gluten-Friendly Crust
- Daiya Mozzarella (Vegan Cheese)
- Red Sauce (And Other Sauces)
- Veggie Toppings
- Create Your Own Salad
- Cinnamon Strips (No Cinnamon Glaze)
- Beverages
More details on all these below. I’ll also answer common questions about MOD Pizza’s Garlic Strips, cauliflower crust, pesto sauce, and buffalo sauce! Overall, vegan options at MOD Pizza are quite good, even without any mock meats or vegan protein sources.
I’ll end the post with a whole-food plant-based guide to MOD Pizza, too, in case you’re trying to avoid processed food, as well.
To make this vegan menu, I consulted the allergen menu and other information on the MOD Pizza website. With 13 years of experience with vegan label reading, I feel confident with what I’ve mapped out here. That said, it never hurts to ask for details with staff at your location.
1. Vegan Classic Pizzas
MOD Pizza has several “Classic” pizza styles. Some of these are vegetarian and can be easily made vegan by just requesting dairy-free cheese instead of cow’s cheese. Just remember to ask for the vegan version specifically.
Here are the options:
- Vegan Maddy: Just a vegan cheese pizza.
- Vegan Lucy Sunshine: Dairy-free cheese, artichokes, garlic, dollops of red sauce.
- Vegan Dillon James: Dairy-free cheese, fresh chopped basil, garlic, sliced tomatoes, red sauce.
You may also be able to vegan-ize other “Classics” on the MOD Pizza menu… But these are the easy ones. Their other pizzas contain pesto, meat, or other details that would be harder to replace with what MOD has on hand.
2. Build Your Own Pizza
You can also build your whole custom vegan pizza. This is what I would recommend. It’s fun getting to dictate exactly what you want on it.
Vegan Crust Options:
You’ve got multiple vegan pizza dough options at MOD Pizza:
- Original
- Gluten-Friendly
- Thick Crust (Not actually listed in the allergen menu, so I’m waiting for official confirmation from MOD Pizza—but I would highly expect it to be vegan)
Note: The Cauliflower Crust is not vegan, as it contains cheese and egg whites.
Vegan Sauce Options:
- BBQ Sauce
- Garlic Rub
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Red Sauce
- Spicy Red Sauce
Vegan Cheese:
MOD Pizza just has one dairy-free cheese option:
- Daiya Mozzarella Style Shreds – If you’re not familiar, this is a gluten-free, nut-free, and soy-free vegan cheese. So this is a great choice even for vegans with allergies and food intolerances.
Veggies:
- Artichokes
- Arugula
- Banana Peppers (limited locations)
- Basil
- Black Olives
- Broccoli
- Cilantro
- Corn
- Garlic
- Greek Olives
- Green Bell Peppers
- Jalapenos
- Mama Lil’s Sweet Hot Peppas
- Mushrooms
- Oregano
- Pineapple
- Red Onion
- Red Peppers
- Romaines
- Rosemary
- Sea Salt
- Sea Salt & Pepper
- Serrano Peppers (limited locations)
- Spinach
- Spring Mix
- Sriracha Chickpeas
- Tomatoes
Vegan Finishing Sauces:
These sauces can be added as a topping on top of the vegan cheese and veggies:
- Balsamic Fig Glaze
- BBQ Swirl
- Hot Buffalo Sauce
- Red Sauce Dollops
- Herb & Caper Green Sauce
Note: The Sri-Rancha Sauce is not vegan, as it contains eggs and milk.
3. Salad
MOD Pizza has awesome salad options. They allow you to build your own salad completely from scratch, or you can modify their Simple Salad to be vegan.
- Create Your Own Salad: Start with mixed greens or romaine, then add any of the same veggies listed above as pizza toppings. (You can also get vegan cheese on your salad.)
- Simple Salad (w/ Vegan Cheese): If you ask them to just substitute dairy-free cheese into the “Simple Salad,” you’ll be getting a refreshing minimal salad of greens, roasted red peppers, and balsamic dressing.
Vegan salad dressings:
- Balsamic
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Lemon Vinaigrette
- Red Wine Vinegar
Note: The Italian dressing is not vegan—it contains cheese.
4. Cinnamon Strips
This is a novel option! A vegan dessert—it’s about time! The Cinnamon Strips themselves are vegan, and the Cinnamon Topping is vegan.
Beware, however: The Cinnamon Icing contains milk. So choose the chocolate sauce or strawberry puree—those are vegan. The chocolate sauce sounds especially like it would go well with these cinnamon strips.
5. Beverages
Plenty of choices for vegan drinks:
- Caramelized Pear Ice Tea
- Vintage Lemonade
- Marionberry Lemonade
- Black Tea
- Coca-Cola Products
- Dr Pepper Products
Alcoholic Drinks: Most MOD Pizza locations also offer draft beer and wine. Depending on the selection at your location, I recommend Barnivore as a resource to check whether the alcoholic drinks are vegan.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some answer to common questions about vegan options at MOD Pizza.
Are MOD Pizza Garlic Strips Vegan?
MOD Pizza Garlic Strips are not typically vegan, as they come with parmesan cheese. However, you can ask about special-ordering them vegan. I recently reached out to MOD Pizza to confirm that this modification is possible, and I’m waiting to hear back. If I get an answer, I’ll update this post.
Aside from the parmesan cheese, the only other suspect ingredient is “natural butter flavor.” The butter flavor does not come from real butter, but it’s created with a “garlic butter substitute” which is made of the following ingredients:
Garlic butter substitute: Butter substitute (expeller pressed soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, sea salt, soybean lecithin, natural butter flavor, colored with beta carotene), granulated garlic).
Is MOD Pizza Pesto Vegan?
MOD Pizza Pesto is not vegan, as it contains parmesan cheese. Here are the full ingredients of MOD Pizza Pesto:
Ingredients: Basil, canola oil, water, parmesan cheese (pasteurized part-skim cows’ milk, cheese culture, salt, enzymes), granulated garlic, salt.
Is MOD Pizza Red Sauce Vegan?
MOD Pizza Red Sauce is vegan. It contains no cheese, dairy, meat, or any other animal products. Here are the full ingredients of MOD Pizza red sauce:
Ingredients: Fresh vine-ripened California tomatoes, extra heavy tomato puree, salt, citric acid, tomato puree, tomato juice, salt, calcium chloride, citric acid, basil, granulated garlic, black pepper, crushed red pepper, yeast extract, oregano, marjoram, sunflower oil, silicon dioxide (to prevent caking), natural flavor.
Is MOD Pizza Buffalo Sauce Vegan?
MOD Pizza’s Hot Buffalo Sauce is vegan. Here are the full ingredients:
Ingredients: Aged cayenne red peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt and garlic powder.
What Kind of Dairy-Free Cheese Does MOD Pizza Use?
MOD Pizza uses Daiya Mozzarella Style Shreds as their dairy-free cheese. Along with being dairy-free, Daiya brand vegan cheese is nut-free, gluten-free, soy-free, and egg-free.
Is MOD Pizza Cauliflower Crust Vegan?
MOD Pizza Cauliflower Crust is not vegan, as it contains cheese and egg whites. Here is the full list of ingredients for their cauliflower crust:
Ingredients: Cauliflower, low moisture mozzarella cheese (pasteurized milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), rice flour, tapioca starch, water, egg whites, rice starch, modified food starch, sugar, yeast, salt, cultured brown rice, garlic powder, italian seasoning, xanthan gum.
Whole-Food Plant-Based Options
What if you’re not just trying to eat vegan at MOD Pizza but also whole-food plant-based (WFPB)? Can you fill up as a vegan while avoiding processed foods here?
Unfortunately, the vegan pizza crust options at MOD are not really WFPB. They both contain processed flour and oil. So if you’re being strictly WFPB, you’d have to just go for a big salad.
Since they don’t typically have avocado or other high-calorie WFPB toppings at MOD Pizza, it might be hard to get full eating WFPB here. But you can at least grab a quality salad that you can build up from scratch.
Note: The roasted corn and roasted broccoli toppings do typically include extra virgin olive oil. So avoid those if you’re trying to stick to 100% WFPB.
Two More Recommendations for Your Plant-Based Journey
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