Walmart’s Frozen Vegan Clearance Sale and What It Might Mean

Shoppers across the country (including me) are reporting and posting about steep markdowns on vegan and plant-based frozen items at Walmart, with most items averaging around $2, and in some stores, even lower. I recently grabbed quite a few items marked down to $2 but the discounts aren’t showing up everywhere, and that inconsistency is a part of the story.

Reports vary widely by location with some stores marking vegan frozen items down as much as 70 percent. Others are seeing discounts closer to 50 percent and a number of shoppers say their local Walmart has no markdowns on these items at all. I found my discounted items at a Supercenter near me while a Neighborhood Market (their smaller footprint store concept) a few miles away had nothing marked down. I will also note that this clearance sale was not just targeted to the vegan items at Walmart as I noticed a number of other conventional products also marked down in the aisles.

I checked some expiration dates on the items I bought and found some dated out to 2027, which seemed to rule out a routine near expiration clearance as the explanation.

The rumors making the rounds.

One rumor circulating claims Walmart is reducing vegan frozen space in some stores, going from two freezer doors of options down to two shelves. Another is that Walmart may be moving some of the plant-based offerings near their meat and dairy counterparts and not keeping them grouped in one section. I know some vegans will be unhappy if that turns out to be true but I have not been able to confirm this with Walmart directly as I reached out to them but didn’t receive a response as of publishing.

This could mean the clearance sale might be a normal, periodic reset rather than a permanent cut to their vegan frozen selections, or something else.

Walmart routinely does resets.

Historically, Walmart hits the reset button on its freezer aisles twice a year specifically in the spring and in the summer so the timing seems right and I recall a lot of items being marked down in the past around these times although maybe not at this scale. Usually it was specific SKUs and not entire lines from brands which seems to be more of the case this time. One reason for this mass clearance could be that they’re planning to bring in more Bettergoods (their newish private label line) products and are clearing out shelf space for them.

Someone who says they worked at Walmart for 25 years seemed to confirm this recently in a Facebook group post and according to them, store resets don’t happen company wide at once. They said changes roll out by location based on what sells at that specific store and from that explanation, a store with no markdowns yet may simply not have reached its reset window. Someone else told me that larger volume stores may have the largest discounts at 70 percent with medium having around 50 percent markdowns and smaller stores having less or none.

Where this stands.

Right now there could be different explanations. One is a scheduled reset that happens to be hitting the vegan frozen category and the other is a more deliberate reduction in shelf space for these items. What turns out to be true only time will tell but if I get an update from Walmart I will surely pass it on. For now, some that are upset that their stores don’t have any deals yet may just need to be patient as the markdowns could be coming.

While the deals are great now which helps consumers struggling with rising grocery prices, the longer view is that these items also may not be available in the future and some who rely on Walmart as their only local option for vegan shopping may feel the sting most.

UPDATE

A detailed comment on my Instagram post offered a specific explanation. According to them, Walmart’s frozen department is overhauling its layout and eliminating a section called Purposeful Nutrition, which had grouped vegan and vegetarian items together with other health trend products like organic and gluten free options. They claim some of those products aren’t disappearing but are being moved into the regular aisles next to their conventional counterparts like I mentioned was a rumor previously in this post, and that some stores may even pick up new vegan items in the process. The comment also claims the steepest clearance pricing are on products that aren’t returning to that specific store at all unfortunately.

I can’t verify this new information, but the explanation is detailed and plausible, and it lines up with the store to store inconsistency shoppers have been reporting.

UPDATE: 7/22/2026

Since my last update, Walmart has released its own Bettergoods plant based corn dogs, which supports the theory that their private label line might be expanding. Other items being moved nearer their conventional counterparts is also happening in most locations. Word is that the clearances items won’t be returning to a store that clearanced them out but not every store got rid of the same items so it’s hit or miss at different locations and even neighborhood markets versus supercenters. Some are dismayed on social media already over having to search around the store now and see meat products near the plant-based ones. Story is still developing so I will update if I learn more.

Kreg Sterns is the founder of Big Box Vegan, a national plant-based grocery content platform covering vegan finds, product news, and store-level reporting at major retailers since 2018. He is the 2026 VegNews Veggie Award winner for Favorite Vegan Instagrammer and has been featured by NPR, VegNews, and The Kitchn.