Guy Fieri's First Food Business Sold This Popular Snack

Guy Fieri has become an iconic face in America's food scene. A bestselling author and Emmy award-winning TV host, Fieri is known for his signature spikey-haired look and love of unique restaurants (though there are some foods Fieri won't touch). But long before he was touring the towns of the United States for his hit Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," Fieri was slinging out a popular snack from a small, homemade cart: Soft baked pretzels.

Fieri traces his love of food all the way back to this time, when he was just 10 years old with a simple business idea. With the help of his father, the Columbus, Ohio native built a pretzel cart using a three-wheeled bicycle. The business was called The Awesome Pretzel Cart, an appropriate name for a 10-year-old entrepreneur to come up with, and it lasted for six years.

Fieri used the business to save money to study in France, where he learned all about international food. He was able to return and study further at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and later enter the restaurant business –- building the foundations for the illustrious career he has today.

Fieri's family moved to Northern California when he was a kid, and this is where he tasted his first glorious soft pretzel. He told The Sporkful podcast in 2017 that he discovered the snack at a ski lodge during a family vacation at Lake Tahoe. He was hooked. His dad suggested that he start selling pretzels himself in their hometown and a seed was planted.

Fieri apparently went so far as to ask the Tahoe lodge where they got their pretzels from but they wouldn't reveal the secret. Instead, he told Variety that he rooted through the lodge's garbage and found the box the pretzels came in. After six months building The Awesome Pretzel Cart, Fieri started to ride the bike around his town serving the same pretzels. "I really attribute a tremendous amount of how I got to where I am from having the pretzel cart," Fieri told the Make It Better Foundation. 

Wanting to give back to his community and bring the cart back to life, Fieri built and donated a new version of the Awesome Pretzel Cart to the Ferndale Elementary School in 2010 so that the students could raise money for their 8th grade trip. His foundation has donated more carts to other worthy organizations since. So, while his own businesses continue to grow, it's clear that pretzels still hold a place in Fieri's heart.