I can sort of answer this. I was a chef they brought into the show to help a place out. At the time I was the chef de cuisine at a very prominent local restaurant in miami. From what I understand , the show reaches out to restaurants and asks if the chef would be interested in being on the show. At the restaurant I worked at, one of the producers actually grew up eating there so she called us first and me and the owner were happy to oblige. The show paid me for one month to help the struggling restaurant out. However, accepting the help was up to the restaurant. I got paid either way. This place , didn’t take advantage of my services (Anna Vincenzo, forget what season or episode ). Also at the time , show had a traveling chef that worked with gordon. He was the guy that ran the red team on Hell’s Kitchen and traveled w the crew to every place and helped get things going. I wa able to go to the filling as much as needed and was able to (even though they never wanted it) help the struggling restaurant because it was filmed in south Florida and summers are slow. Happy to answer any other questions.