Guy Fieri Raised A Ton Of Money For Food Workers During The Pandemic, Even Though The World’s Richest Man ‘Didn’t Help Us’

Guy Fieri’s hair might be a joke, but his relief efforts are anything but that.

The flamboyant Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host has raised over $25 million for restaurant workers impacted by the pandemic. “So many people work in the restaurant industry in multiple jobs, second jobs, single moms, single parents, students, retirees. And the restaurant industry is massively important to our communities,” he told CBS earlier this month about working with the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. “So, when I saw this coming, I said, ‘We got to do something to get some money to these folks.’”

Fieri was also profiled by the Hollywood Reporter, where he discussed his fundraising work — and revealed that the world’s richest man didn’t give a penny. “I don’t get pissed or lose my shit. But I was pissed,” he said about his mood in the early days of the pandemic. Fieri channeled that energy into asking “his business manager for contact info for CEOs of major corporations,” according to the Reporter. “He drafted personal emails to power brokers like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, soliciting donations for an emergency relief fund that would ultimately award more than 43,000 grants — of $500 each — to out-of-work line cooks, servers, and other restaurant professionals.”

The CEOs of PepsiCo, Uber Eats, and Procter & Gamble came through with “huge sums of money,” but although Fieri doesn’t enjoy “shaming people and telling who didn’t donate, that’s not my style,” he did admit, “Jeff, by the way, didn’t help us.” That would be Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of over $200 billion. The Amazon CEO might be worthless (the irony) for this particular cause, but Fieri is being hailed as a “national treasure” and a “blessing” on social media.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)