Where All Those Groceries From Food Network's Guy's Grocery Games End Up After The Show

"Guy's Grocery Games" takes place in a 15,500 square foot former grocery warehouse and features over 20,000 items. These include 241 types of produce, 67 varieties of fresh local meat, and 442 pounds of fresh and frozen seafood. Producers also bring in fresh-baked goods, sometimes more than once a week. The store is typically stocked on Monday morning before the week's shooting schedule begins. Filming lasts through Friday, with each day taking about 12 hours to complete, including the challenges, interviews, and setup. By Friday, there's still a lot of good quality food on shelves. Sadly, you can't shop there, but none of it goes to waste.

Producers check meat and produce for items approaching their expiration date that will not last until the next round of filming. Whatever is eligible is donated to local food banks, schools, and shelters like the Redwood Gospel Mission. Thousands of pounds of food are donated every single week. Even food that can't be donated, like scraps from meal prep, isn't thrown out if it doesn't have to be. These items are used as animal feed on local farms.

Redwood Gospel Mission picks up donations five days a week during the four-month filming season. Because the show uses both common and unusual ingredients, the Redwood Gospel Mission receives everyday items ranging from chicken, pork, and fish to more unique ones like boxed Peking duck, based on the show's menu that day. That means recipients get to experience quality and variety that is not typical.

By the end of a season, Guy and the Food Network donate about 30,000 pounds of food. Non-perishable items are covered and stored for the next season, but anything that may spoil cannot be left behind. Show staff gather up items at the end of filming to be inventoried, weighed, and picked up by workers. Other charitable organizations are invited to come on set and shop for what they need from what is left over.

Redwood Empire Food Bank thanked Guy for the show's donation and said it received 18,000 meals' worth of food. Farm to Pantry, a non-profit that helps feed those in need, has also posted videos showing how it collects donations from the show's produce section. Salvaged groceries are considered a key to reducing food waste, so Guy is ahead of the curve here.

"Guy's Grocery Games" mirrors other shows like "MasterChef" that donate unused food, but on a much larger scale. Few other shows offer such a large selection as GGG, making the leftover donations more valuable to recipients. The reboot of "Supermarket Sweep," which used a set similar to "Guy's Grocery Games," also donated 95 pallets of food to local charities after production wrapped. Some of the donations went to wildlife foundations, too. This makes for an interesting contrast to smaller-scale shows like "The Great British Bake Off," where contestants have to pay for their own ingredients (except in the finale), and the contestants and crew eat the food when filming is wrapped.