History Series / TheNextFoodNetworkStar

* Season Two - Guy Fieri. To date, Fieri has been the most successful TV personality to have come out of ''The Next Food Network Star''. In addition to his first show, ''Guy's Big Bite'', which was produced after he won the competition, he has also starred in ''Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives'', ''Guy Off the Hook'', ''Series/MinuteToWinIt'' (on Creator/{{NBC}}) and he co-hosted ''Ultimate Recipe Showdown'' with Marc Summers. From late 2013 on, he's the host of ''Series/GuysGroceryGames'', a GameShow borrowing elements of ''Series/{{Chopped}}'' and ''Series/CutthroatKitchen'' and situated in a supermarket. He also makes frequent guest appearances on other Food Network shows, including later seasons of Next Food Network Star.

* The50s: Adored and invoked by Season 8 contestant Emily, whose perspective is "retro rad".

* NostalgiaFilter: When Alton asks Emily to explain why she's into TheFabulous50s theme, Emily asserts that life was just simpler and "effortless" in the 1950's.

* TheFabulous50s: Adored and invoked by Season 8 contestant Emily, whose perspective is "retro rad".

* TheFabulousFifties: Adored and invoked by Season 8 contestant Emily, whose perspective is "retro rad".

* NostalgiaFilter: When Alton asks Emily to explain why she's into TheFabulousFifties theme, Emily asserts that life was just simpler and "effortless" in the 1950's.

** Starting with Season 9, the format has been changed again, so that Bobby, Giada and Alton now operate as a team, coaching the contestants jointly through a series of challenges and sitting as the judging panel at the end of each episode. The usual format is a "dry run" of some sort riffing on the episode's theme, followed by the actual challenge (e.g., in Season 10 Episode 4, the contestants were tasked to make "selfie" videos of themselves on the FNS set, then divided into teams to produce marketing videos to be posted on Website/YouTube.)

* SeeminglyWholesomeFiftiesGirl: Emily initially appears to attempting to imitate a standard, stereotypically innocent 1950's archetype (and she does adore the 50's). That being said, she also loved being a little flirtatious in front of the camera and made sure to show plenty of cleavage, at one point actually [[VictoriasSecretCompartment storing ingredients in that area of her dress]].

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Yes...this was actually invoked on this show. In an early S8 episode, Michelle describes the clams she's prepared for the judges as being "sexy." When Susie Fogleson asks her "So why is this sexy?" Michelle pauses, laughs awkwardly, then says "That broth...makes me wanna go home aaaand...*starts smiling and winking suggestively*." The judges, totally blindsided, chuckle awkwardly and Bob Tuschman quips "We're going to lose our G-Rating!" One can imagine that somewhere in the home audience, Season 7's [[MrsRobinson Penny]] was enthusiastically nodding in approval of Michelle, given that in S7 she'd once described a piece of fennel as "sexy" and when questioned by Bobby Flay had replied that she found "the shape of it" to be sexy.

* {{Gainaxing}}: [[MrsRobinson Penny...]] Did this...

* ActorExistenceFailure / InMemoriam: Season 8 contestant Cristie Schoen and her husband were brutally murdered in March of 2015.

* {{Meganekko}}: Emily from Season 8

* AlohaHawaii: Season 8 contestant Ippy.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: In the season nine premiere, an audience is given devices similar to dials that record how much they approve of the contestants' promotional footage for their shows. The general audience's reaction was showed on screen. A majority of the contestants' promos ended up in the red zone, and several even reached the ultimate low level.

* Season Eight - Justin Warner, from Team Alton. His show ''Rebel Eats'' will focus on creating innovative dishes by breaking rules. So far, it's strangely only aired one hour-long episode (after nearly a year since he won the show) with no word on any follow-up episodes forthcoming. Word is that a full season is coming eventually.

* Season Nine - Damaris Phillips. Her show, ''Southern At Heart'', focuses on the relationship between food and love, especially in terms of Southern cooking. The show is currently completing its second season.

* Season Eleven - Eddie Jackson. A former football star, originally going for a "Cheat day" series and eventually deciding upon barbecue cooking, his show "Barbecue Blitz" was a competitive show with him as a host, instead of a how-to-cook show such as the rest of the former contestants.
* Season Twelve - Tregaye Fraser. Only got to host three episodes of season two of ''The Kitchen Sink'' - an already existing show - for some reason. Damiano Carrara - one of the runners up - has made more appearances than Tregaye, as a judge on assorted competition shows.
* Season Thirteen - Jason Smith, a baker known for his flamboyant clothes and quirky Southern sayings. As with the last few seasons, was not given his own show, but instead was utilized to judge other Food Network shows. His first post-win appearance was as a judge on ''Best Baker in America''.

* Season Four - Aaron [=McCargo=], Jr. The fourth season finale was unique because the judges did not eliminate any of the three contestants on the week before the finale. [=McCargo=], Jr. beat Adam Gertler and Lisa Garza and went on to star in ''Big Daddy's House''. In another unique development, runner-up Gertler has been tapped to star in two shows to date: ''Will Work for Food'' and ''Kid in a Candy Store'', and it could be argued that Gertler has actually been more successful on the network than [=McCargo=], Jr. Another notable runner-up is Kelsey Nixon, who got her own cooking show on Creator/CookingChannel called ''Kelsey's Essentials''. Considering that ''three'' contestants have gone on to have shows and that a fourth (Lisa Garza) now has her own line of clothing, one could argue that this may have been the most successful season in terms of finding a number of viable talents.

* Season Thirteen - Christian Petroni and Jess Tom; the first tie in the show's history. The tie is especially strange in retrospect, as Christian has become a regular on Food Network shows, but Jess pretty much disappeared right away.

** Season 7 featured Juba, who seemed like a perfectly nice, knowledgeable, and {{Adorkable}} fellow; unfortunately, he seemed utterly terrified of the camera, and would spend most of his camera time stuttering aimlessly, resulting in his quick elimination. His proposed show idea "Simple Complex" (In the words of Alton Brown: ''HUH?'') was painfully vague because of his inability to function on camera; it did have some fascinating tidbits (supposedly he was going to integrate food, art, and science) but we never got any further explanation from him.

* HighSchoolAU: In Season 8, the utterly {{Adorkable}} Emily from Team Alton actually starts imagining this trope on camera. Emily proposes that if this show were a HighSchoolAU, "Team Bobby would be the jocks, Team Giada would be the cheerleaders, and we on Team Alton would be the nerds and the geeks." If one applies the trope to previous seasons, Season 6 could have featured Herb as the LovableJock and both Serena and Aarti as the {{Foreign Exchange Student}}s, and Season 7 would have definitely featured Penny as the AlphaBitch. Bobby Flay and Alton Brown would be the {{Stern Teacher}}s and Giada the CoolTeacher of course.

* LovableJock: Herb from Season 6 is a personal trainer and very muscular. He's also extremely nice, cries often because of how much he misses his wife and daughters, and in general seemed to be a fun-loving source of encouragement for the other contestants. His {{Adorkable}} personality--as well as his cooking talent--helped get him to the finale.

* {{Adorkable}}:
** Season 8: Emily and Justin from Team Alton
** Season 6: Herb, Brad, and of course Season 6's winner, Aarti;
** Season 7: Susie and Jeff
** Also Viet from Season 9.
** Arnold from Season 11. A CampGay, soft-spoken, Asian-American from the DeepSouth. The problem was never his food as much as it was his tendency to go into [[TooMuchInformation information overload]] on camera.
** Erin from Season 12. Think a very perky Christmas elf on vacation from the North Pole.

** In Season 6, the rather bitchy Brianna was rather cruel to Serena, though after being forced to work together on a food truck challenge, they ended up on better terms. Paul was also quite mean to Serena, making fun of her Italian accent and just generally demeaning her in every way possible (poor Serena was almost like a prototype for Season 7's Alicia in terms of how bullied and woobified she was that season!)

** Puck also insulted a contestant in the first week of Season 6, and made it a pretty stinging insult at that. He ended up bringing the contestant to tears. Worse, the contestant had been a huge fan of Puck's until that day.
** Season 6: Brianna was ''very'' bitchy towards Serena, but eventually they did end up on better terms. Paul was also quite a jerk towards Serena (poor girl just couldn't catch a break that season!), constantly belittling her and even rather viciously making fun of her Italian accent.

** On a more serious note, Bobby Flay is VERY prone to asking these to the contestants to help see whether they deserve to stay or not. In Season 7, immature ManChild Chris was attempting to argue with Bobby over his criticism, and Bobby shut him up by simply asking "Do you ''really'' want me to bring up that [[CordonBleughChef lobster roll]] [[NeverLiveItDown from last week?]]"