Go Inside Flavortown Market: Guy's Grocery Games

Get a behind-the-scenes tour of the supermarket set built for Guy's Grocery Games and find out what it takes to keep it running for real.

A Real Market Within a TV Set

With the second season of Guy's Grocery Games, the show moved into an all-new market, a set built within a 15,500-square-foot warehouse in Santa Rosa, Calif. But there's nothing fake about this store — it's stocked with more than 20,000 items. And just like any real store, it has a staff that orders the goods and stocks the shelves. Click through to see what happens in just one week to keep this market functioning for the show.

Quantity and Quality

Every day the store team examines the aisles to determine what items need replenishing or replacement, starting with the produce section, which inevitably will need to be refreshed. The store team's most-important job is making sure the quality of the food is at the highest standard.

The Routine

Monday morning is a race through the aisles for the store team to get the market up and ready for the competition. Three hours are allotted for restocking and refreshing all sections, including produce, dairy, meat, seafood and the bakery counter.

Stocking Up on Produce

On Monday the produce order arrives from Nor-Cal Produce, Inc. in West Sacramento consisting of two to three pallets of produce, including fruits, vegetables and herbs. On average the order will contain 40 to 50 different items. In total the produce section has 241 different items.

A Vast Variety of Proteins

Meat and poultry comes from a local purveyor, Santa Rosa Meat & Poultry. A delivery includes different cuts of beef, lamb, veal, chicken, duck, turkey and pork, as well as fresh and smoked sausages — about 67 different items are kept in stock at once. To maximize shelf life, the meat comes vacuum-sealed.

Appliances and Equipment at Hand

Of course because it is a competition, the store also has shelves of appliances and equipment for the contestants to utilize during challenges. A chef may need anything from a super-powered blender to a set of measuring spoons. This aisle is stocked with hundreds of culinary items.

The Ultimate in Freshness

The seafood order arrives on Friday or Saturday from Tides Wharf Fish Market in Bodega Bay. The delivery includes about 25 fresh and frozen products. Fresh items are vacuum-sealed to protect their freshness over the weekend, and frozen items are allowed to thaw in the walk-in refrigerated unit — that way everything is ready for the contestants on Monday. The seafood cases contain about 442 pounds of seafood each week.

Baked to Perfection

Franco-American Bakery provides the baked goods that you see beyond the judges' table. Enough bread is ordered on Monday to last through Wednesday, with smaller orders taken on Thursday or Friday to replenish baked goods that are running low in stock.

Checking In to Check Out

All products, no matter how big or small, are processed through an actual inventory database system used by supermarkets. UPC codes are entered into the system so that for certain challenges, such as Budget Battle, they can be scanned at checkout lanes with actual receipts produced.

Waste Not, Want Not

The contestants have thousands of items at their disposal for the cooking challenges. But nothing is allowed to go to waste. On Friday night, the bread, meat and seafood cases are checked for items that are close to expiring. Products that are still good are donated to local food banks. And even the food scraps left over from cooking don't go to waste — they go to a local farm for animal feed.

Ready to Shop

Restocking happens throughout the week, with smaller orders done midweek to ensure the market is always ready for the competition. The contestants will never have to worry about not finding an item they need, unless it's an Out of Stock challenge!

Capturing the Action

Up to 30 cameras, including the mini ones that are attached to the shopping carts, will capture all the action that takes place in Flavortown Market. Though shopping here is quite different than in a real market, because here it's a race — or is it any different?