“Through thick and thin, Guy has championed the unique voice of restaurant workers, and the pandemic has been no exception. We’re proud to have partnered with him on the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund and thank him for his dedication to raising awareness and
donations for this important cause.”
— Greg Cook Executive Vice President and General Manager of Global Institutional Ecolab
supporting restaurants is why he convinced Discovery to redirect more than $210,000 of price money from the first season of Tournament of Champions to struggling restaurateurs. Even the sets on his shows are an opportunity to help those in need. Where most productions would have used fake, unperishable mock- ups to fill the shelves of a faux grocery store, all the food in Guy’s Grocery Games is real. After filming, it is donated to the Redwood Gospel mission, an amount equal to $350,000 in unused food last year. Most of Fieri’s charitable work comes through his namesake organization. In 2011, he started the Guy Fieri Foundation as an initiative to teach the next generation of chefs how to cook. Today, the organization has served 120,000 meals to first responders, hospital workers and wildfire evacuees from its disaster relief trailer. It has also catered appreciation events in support of organizations such as the California Highway Patrol and allowed Fieri to entertain and cook for troops stationed in the Persian Gulf.
Although the foundation’s work to feed people during disasters is its most publicly visible initiative, culinary education remains at the heart of its mission. Each year, the foundation donates tens of thousands of dollars to the California Restaurant Association to fund scholarships for aspiring culinary workers and it also provides resources for entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry. “I was raised to always help your community, to always help people who need help, and to participate. You have to be an active member,” Fieri said in a statement to the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation (NRAEF).
Responding to COVID-19 A recent New York Times profile described Fieri as the
“Elder Statesman of Flavortown,” a person admired and revered among chef circles for his work in the kitchen and in supporting the entire industry. That veneration has only grown during the COVID-19 pandemic as Fieri took a hands-on leadership role in helping the everyday people in the industry survive the sudden and unexpected closure of restaurants. By his own estimate, Fieri figured that many mom-and-pop restaurants had only about 10 days of being closed before their money would be gone, leaving their workers without a livelihood while the pandemic swept through their communities. Understanding the lasting damage that would cause, Fieri went right to work on creating the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, a one-time $500 grant for restaurant workers across the country. “So many people work in the restaurant industry in multiple jobs, or they’re second jobs – single moms, single parents, students, retirees,” Fieri said in a CBS News interview in April 2021. “The restaurant industry is massively important to our communities. As so, when I saw this coming, I said, ‘We got to do something to get some money to these folks.’” Together, Fieri and the NRAEF raised more than $25 million for the fund from 50 companies and 15,000 individual donors. More than 43,000 restaurant workers received one of the grants, with 90 percent of recipients planning to use the funds to help with rent or their mortgage. “Through thick and thin, Guy has championed the unique voice of restaurant workers, and the pandemic
Summer 2022 11
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