Humboldt native and Mayor of Flavortown Guy Fieri recently told TMZ that he helped set up a fund with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation to establish a grant system for struggling restaurant industry employees. 

“I started thinking about my brothers and sisters in the restaurant business and a bunch of the restaurants I was closing,” Fieri told hosts Harvey Levin and Charles Latibeardiere, adding that this sparked him to reach out to major restaurant industries such as Pepsi, Coke and Uber Eats in order to help employees. 

Over $21.5 million has been doled out in the last two months in the form of $500 grants. The NRAEF grant is called the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund and has received over 60,000 application submissions to date. 

During the interview, Levin said he is worried about the longevity of the restaurant industry and asked Fieri if he thinks restaurants will be able to outlast the pandemic. Fieri said he feels the small-scale “mom and pop” restaurants will be able to make it because of their relatively low overhead cost. 

“When they get a little bit larger, when they have a huge staff with a lot of training and a lot of moving parts inside of it, I don’t know if they are going to be able to recover as fast,” Fieri said. “But just looking and listening and hearing what’s going on, I think people are going to be fired up, gung ho and ready to get out there and visit their restaurants a lot more than they were prior to the pandemic.”