The Secret Menu Items You Need To Try At Arby's

Arby's has been serving up its signature roast beef sandwiches at over 3,400 restaurants worldwide for over 56 years. The chain was founded in Boardman, Ohio in 1956 by Leroy and Forest Raffel, who wanted to start a fast food restaurant that specialized in something other than hamburgers. The founders decided roast beef sandwiches were the perfect fast food foil to burgers, and they were franchised within a year. Arby's has gone on to national and even international expansion and you can now find an Arby's in 48 states and four counties outside the United States: Canada, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. 

The Arby's menu is chock full of interesting menu items that go beyond the classic roast beef sandwiches. With three different gyros, an impressively large corned beef Reuben, an even buffalo chicken sliders, milkshakes, cookies, and floats. Thinking outside the box the next time you get a craving for Arby's will make your fast food meal even more rewarding, and the brand's secret menu is so popular it even has its own official website. 

With many fast food secret menus, you'll encounter raised eyebrows from employees, and sometimes you even have to DIY your secret menu creations. At Arby's, at least for the time being, you can actually order a few secret menu items online as long as you use Doordash. The chain has generous policies regarding free extras, bread switches, and upgrades, making it one of the easiest menus to hack.  

A ham and swiss cheese sandwich might seem like a surprisingly basic item to get a spot on a secret menu, especially since there is already a ham and Swiss sandwich on the regular menu at Arby's. However, fans insist that the secret menu version is far superior to the standard slider, which is literally just ham and Swiss cheese on a soft, slider-sized dinner roll. The off-menu version is better, bigger, and is much bolder in terms of flavor. Served on toasted honey wheat bread, the secret menu roast ham and Swiss cheese sandwich is piled high with sliced roast ham and cheese, then gets topped off with lettuce, tomato, and sliced red onion. If that isn't enough, there are two spreads on this sandwich: mayo and spicy brown honey mustard. 

Since this sandwich is just a variation on the Market Fresh sandwiches and wraps that are offered on Arby's menus across the United States, you shouldn't have too much trouble ordering this secret menu item. Essentially, you will want to order a Roast Turkey & Swiss Market Fresh sandwich from the regular menu, but ask them to swap out the turkey for ham. For another classic secret menu variation, ask for a Roast Beef & Swiss, which is the exact same sandwich made with roast beef. 

The Arby's take on a reuben sandwich is already a thing of beauty in its own right. This sandwich was originally launched as part of the Big City Sandwiches campaign, which was first introduced in 2017. The lineup included the New York Reuben, the Fire Roasted Philly, and the Chicago-Style Beef Dip. The Chicago-Style Beef Dip is the only sandwich out of the trio that is no longer available — although you can hack the menu by ordering a French Dip & Swiss with roasted peppers, banana peppers, and Italian seasoning added, a sort of hybrid between the Loaded Italian and the French Dip & Swiss. 

The standard Reuben starts with marbled rye bread, then adds melted Swiss cheese, sliced corned beef, sauerkraut, and thousand island dressing for a pretty classy fast food version of this classic New York deli sandwich. To make it a double-stacked Reuben from the Arby's secret menu, all you have to do is ask for your sandwich to be made with double meat — that's just about as easy as secret menu ordering gets! The Arby's Reuben sandwich is typically made with three and a half ounces of meat, so the double-stacked version will get you to a full seven ounces, or almost half a pound, of the chain's sliced corned beef. 

According to QSR Magazine, Arby's first introduced the Ultimate BLT in 2002 as the sixth sandwich to join their lineup of popular Market Fresh sandwiches. Launched as a limited time only item at a $3.99 price point, the Arby's Ultimate BLT sandwich featured a whopping five slices of thick-cut pepper bacon with lettuce, tomatoes, and mayonnaise served on their Market Fresh thick-sliced honey wheat bread. 

The sandwich was originally launched in the summer and is currently back on the official secret menu, labeled as "the quintessential summer sandwich." The version currently on the secret menu comes with eight slices of bacon rather than five, but everything else about the sandwich remains the same. If you want to further hack the Ultimate BLT from the Arby's Secret Menu, we recommend taking advantage of the bread switch policy and ordering your next Ultimate BLT on the marbled rye bread that the chain uses to make their corned beef Reuben sandwiches. Another great upgrade? Add some zesty Red Ranch to kick up the spice level of this secret menu fan favorite. If you're looking for something less spicy to add flavor to your BLT, ask for the Parmesan Peppercorn Ranch that's used on some of the Market Fresh sandwiches. 

Most people are familiar with Reuben sandwiches, a staple of the New York deli, but what about its sister sandwich, the Rachel? A Rachel is basically a Reuben made with roasted turkey, and there are a few variations that are generally accepted as standard. Some say that you swap the sauerkraut in a Reuben for cole slaw in a Rachel, and that's the version that Arby's chose to make when they launched their own official version of the sandwich as a counterpart to the Arby's Reuben in 2015. Other sources say that the Thousand Island Dressing typically used as the spread on a Reuben should be replaced with either barbecue sauce or French dressing when crafting a Rachel. 

You can't order a Rachel with coleslaw at Arby's anymore (their version was only available for a month), you can, however, hack the menu to make a pretty great version. Order a Reuben, either regular or double stacked, and ask them to swap the corned beef for oven-roasted turkey, then ask for the barbecue sauce that they use on their Smokehouse Brisket sandwich instead of Thousand Island Dressing. 

In 2016, Vice reported that Arby's was playing an April Fool's Joke on vegetarians by offering a trio of "all-bread" sandwiches. The menu is supposedly only offered on Leap Year, so, every four years, but according to Grub Street, the joke is actually on Arby's, because vegetarians have actually been ordering some of the chain's signature sandwiches sans meat for a while now. The Leap Year campaign was little more than a marketing tactic, but dare we say that some of those meatless sandwiches actually sound pretty good? 

The campaign focused on the Reuben, the Loaded Italian, and the Smokehouse Brisket sandwiches, so let's break it down: they're jazzed-up grilled cheese sandwiches that are probably a lot better than sticking a slice of American cheese between two slices of white bread and calling it a day. The meatless Reuben is a no-brainer, with melted Swiss on marbled rye, plus Thousand Island dressing and sauerkraut. The Loaded Italian is a grilled cheese on a sub roll, and with the addition of banana peppers, lettuce, tomato, red wine vinaigrette, and garlic aioli, which makes for a pretty robust meatless sandwich. The Smokehouse Brisket seems like it would be the most lacking, but onion rings with smoked gouda, mayo, and barbecue sauce is actually an appealing combo — especially if you order extra cheese.