Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty
Ever since he won Next Food Network Star nearly two decades ago, Guy Fieri has built his TV brand from the ground up by rollin’ out to greasy spoons all over the country. His ascent riled serious culinary figures like Anthony Bourdain (and anyone who is not a fan of frosted tips), but over time, he became a dominant fixture both on Food Network and within the broader TV landscape. But even though he had to claw his way to the top of the food chain, Fieri has also seemed content to let his eldest son, Hunter, ride his coattails onto the airwaves for the past few years. That’s why it came as a bit of a surprise this week when he announced that neither of his sons (Hunter, 27, or Ryder, 17) will see a dime from the Flavortown fortune until they’d properly earned it.
“I’ve told them the same thing my dad told me,” Fieri said in a recent interview with Fox News—a.k.a. Ground Zero for delusional bootstrap ideology. “My dad says, ‘When I die, you can expect that I’m going to die broke, and you’re going to be paying for the funeral.’”
On one hand, I respect the logic here: Hunter and Ryder shouldn’t necessarily get a free ride in the red Camaro of life just because their daddy made bank by chomping his way through enough drippy burgers to feed the city of Las Vegas. Then again, however, this feels like the kind of celebrity soundbite that simply cannot be true. The “paying for the funeral” bit feels like intentional exaggeration, but even in a broad sense, I struggle to believe that Hunter, Ryder, and Jules (Fieri’s nephew, whom the star has helped raise after his sister Morgan’s death in 2011) aren’t going to get a huge hunk of the pie.