These lucky people share how they came to receive lifetime supplies of food - and how long the supplies actually lasted them.
“We Didn’t Realize That We Both…”
“Last month I won a lifetime supply of pizza (one a day for the rest of my life) for being a restaurant’s 5000th Twitter follower. Even better, my husband won too – we both followed to make sure one of us was the 5000th, and didn’t realise the prize was for 5000th AND 5001st. So we both get free pizza for life! Plus, it’s really, really good pizza – it’s been called the best in the UK by a bunch of food critics and is crazy popular locally. So we’re pretty happy at the moment!”
Soft Tacos With Jimmy Fallon
“Not me but this happen to a good friend back in 2010. He was wasted waiting in line for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Got asked if he wanted to do a skit involving punching balloons on air. So he gets on air and they dress him and two other people up in karate uniforms. The two other people go and kind of try and get some balloons but you can tell they are shy. My buddy gets up there, really really drunk, and Jimmy asks him his name: He tells them his name is ‘Sho-Nuff the Sho Gun of (little town in North East to keep his privacy).’ Quest Love gets up from behind the drum kit and gives Sho-Nuff a hug. My friend proceeds to ninja kick all the balloons and Jimmy tells him he just won a lifetime supply of Soft Taco Kits. The Roots play a theme song ‘Who’s the master? SHO-NUFF!’ I lived with him at the time and we seriously had two pallets of Taco Kits dropped off at our house. We had them in the cabinets, living room entertainment center, gave them away. But you know, 1000 boxes of taco kits are hard to give away. We donated about 200 when we realized we wouldn’t use them all.”
An Odd Gift
“I went to school with a kid who’s mom won a lifetime supply of aluminum foil. They wrap EVERYTHING in foil. His whole lunch every day was wrapped in foil: sandwich, fruit, etc…and then they make one of those baking pouches, and that’s his lunch bag. When we had a dessert potluck his cookies came wrapped in in foil. I asked him about it once and he said they even wrap all their Christmas presents in it, and they still get too many boxes of it. They give it away to friends and family.”
“I Was So Amped Up On B Vitamins That…”
“When Naked brand juice smoothies first came out in San Francisco, I happened to be a homeless vagabond. I sat there by the trolleys with a sign ‘homeless, hungry, anything helps.’ A nice lady was handing out free coupons to try out this new juice at Whole Foods. She saw my plight and was probably sick of handing out coupons, so she dumped hundreds of them in my hat. I lived off of Naked fruit juice smoothies. Every day I would walk into Whole Foods and redeem one of my coupons. I had a seemingly endless supply and the company hadn’t put much information on them, so they didn’t expire! Someone stole my bag though a few months later, but I was so amped up on B vitamins and antioxidants that I chased him down. He said sorry and shared a huge package of imitation crab with me. I made a new friend and bought him some Naked juice with my coupon. I ended up losing the rest of my coupons by being an idiot, but that’s when I sort of had a lifetime supply of something.”
I Can’t Believe She Would Do That To Us
“When I was a kid there was a phone in competition to rename a popular children’s cereal. It cost money to vote as it was a premium number but my mother let my younger brother vote for fun. What we didn’t know at the time was by voting you’d be entered to win a lifetime supply of this cereal and my brother won. So they called up and our mother told them we didn’t want it. My mother ruined our childhood by telling Kellogg’s we didn’t want their lifetime supply of cereal. I could be eating that right now, 16 years later I could still be enjoying that cereal.”
“They Didn’t Even Bother Sending…”
“My wife won a ‘lifetime supply’ of pet food for our cat. They didn’t even bother sending the product, they just tacked another few thousand dollars onto the $10k cash prize. That was a nice little windfall. The only weird thing was that it was paid as a stack of maxed out Visa gift cards. You can’t really pay things like mortgages and credit card bills with what amounts to a credit card, so we ended up using the gift cards for things like groceries. It’s pretty amazing how far your paycheck goes when your bill for food and incidentals is effectively zero.”
They. Were. Everywhere.
“I didn’t really ‘win’ it – but through a series of hilarious events (a grocery truck flipped over, my parents run a tow truck company) I became the owner of about 5000 snack pack puddings. It was all cool and fun until I got home and started filling my cupboards. I didn’t have enough room in my kitchen for all this pudding, so I kept some in my bedroom closet, and when that filled up, my dresser drawers, linen closet, and laundry room cupboards were now makeshift pudding shelters. I finally filled up the kitchen cupboards and pantry top to bottom with pudding cups. Again, great for a bunch of guys smoking weed and doing nothing all day, but really strange when you bring a girl back, she goes to your kitchen, and you can hear her open one cupboard, then another, and another, followed by a whispered ‘what the…’ followed by the pantry being opened and her finally yelling, ‘Hey, what’s with ALL THIS PUDDING?’ If I was able to talk her into spending the night, she would be greeted by a still unfathomable amount of pudding taking residence in my room. If she took a shower in the morning, she’d have to ask where towels were, because, of course, another wall of pudding was staring at her when she tried to find them in the closet. I finally finished enough of the pudding to make room for dishes (I’d been keeping them in the dishwasher, dirty ones in the sink), and eventually started putting actual nutritious food in the kitchen about three months after. I ended up giving a ton of pudding away because I couldn’t bear to eat anymore of the stuff.”
It’s No Faucet But It’ll Do
“Once won a year’s supply of the Tropicana juice drink. Was awesome but you could only buy 4 cartons a month with dated vouchers so it never really felt as magical as I was hoping. 9-year-old me wanted like a dedicated Tropicana faucet in the kitchen.”
“We Begged Them To Stop”
“When I was little, I won a lifetime supply of apples by correctly guessing how many were in a barrel. There were 110 and I guessed 109. The prize was 110 apples at a time each month. It was insane. After the first delivery, my parents begged them to stop. It’s impossible for a family of three to go through 110 apples before they rot, and our neighbors stopped answering the door when they saw my parents standing there with bags of apples. It quickly became, ‘Not again. Here comes Sandra and this time she has apple pie, apple crisp, frozen apples, apple cores, dried apples, apple chips, those creepy old people dolls with rotten apple faces, apples specifically to put into a pig’s mouth, apple cider, apple juice, apple seeds, apple stems, an apple tree, apple butter, candy apples, bacon wrapped apples, apple sandwiches, apple polenta, apple pancakes, and several empty apple barrels.'”
“We Lived The Entire Summer On…”
“Our elderly neighbours won a lifetime supply of Snickers. We have a very large family (parents plus 10 kids) and the summer I was 7 my father was injured at work. While waiting on workers comp to be paid, our electric, water, and gas was all shut off. Our neighbours ran a hose to our backyard for water, an extension cord for a microwave, and gave us dozens of cases of Snickers. We lived the entire summer on candy bars and ramen. I can’t stand the stuff now.”
Let’s See How Long We Can Keep This Up
“Not so much a contest, but, my fraternity contacted red bull, monster, anheuser-busch, and a few others to see if they were interested in ‘sponsoring’ parties in exchange for all the free marketing we can muster. They said yes. Never bought beer. 30x cases of 30, per week, for nothing but a delivery charge (free if we pick it up). Never bought energy drinks. Never bought vodka. We’d get hand truck loads weekly, and reps to make/serve drinks if requested. All we had to do was conspicuously consume. Been about 8 years so far…”
Definitely Not Complaining
“I’m really into competitions, and although I’ve never won a lifetime supply of anything, I’ve won a year’s worth of cheese. Twice. The first time was 12 vouchers but for the second one they actually sent me two massive cheese wheels, they were like 25lb each. I cut them up and filled my fridge and freezer (and the fridge and freezers of my friends) with cheese. It actually froze/defrosted really well, I’ll be eating that cheese for ages.”
Being Friendly Goes A Long Way
“In college, I frequented a specific Jack in the Box that was walking distance from campus. I’d occasionally talk with the manager, who was a pretty cool guy and one of only a few people I knew who were into the world cup. One day he says ‘you want a lifetime supply of milkshakes?’ I thought he was joking so I was like ‘sure.’ And he handed me a huge stack of free milkshake coupons. Not so much a contest, but I guess I won the prize for friendliness.”
Pay It Forward
“A friend of mine won a lifetime of Sonic on a radio contest. Every month he gets a Sonic gift card for $200 and he takes everyone up there for a free meal and spends the rest buying random peoples’ meals.”
Written On Each Card In The Deck Was…
“In 2009 I entered the mychipotle.com contest with a music video and came in second place. 2nd place prize was: $5000 and a party for 50 of our friends at Chipotle (everyone ate for free). Winning that was awesome, but honestly, the best part was that after the contest was over, chipotle asked me how many people were involved in the making of the music video we made, and then sent a deck of playing cards for each person. The catch: each card in the deck of cards had written on it ‘1 free burrito.’ Yeah, including jokers. 56 free Chipotle burritos. Since I was the first person to find out and receive these decks of cards I kept it a secret, I called each person individually and said I had a gift for them. Seeing them open the deck of cards, figure out what it was, then react to it was the best part of this whole thing. Each of them volunteered their time to help make the video with no promise of winning or any reward. So all in all, no lifetime winnings, but to a bunch of teenagers it certainly felt like a lifetime of burritos.”
Candy Kingpin
“I won a year supply of Warhead candies. We were in Walmart when I was about 10 or 11 years old. They had a contest for a sour pucker up face for warheads, and the winner received a year supply of the candy, including experimental candies that weren’t sold in stores yet. I decided to join and was told to come back in 20 minutes when the contest started. I was the only one there. I won by default. Throughout 5th and 6th grade, I received boxes upon boxes of candy every month. It was as if they wanted to give me diabetes because I was getting about $200 worth of candy every month. I started giving it out to friends and family like crazy. Fast forward a couple months into 6th grade and I’m selling it. I made a good $20 a day in quarters and dimes (10 cents each, 3 for 25 cents). Fast forward to high school and I’m a candy kingpin as I started selling candy bars I bought from Sam’s club.”
“They Calculated His Age And Determined…”
“A friend of mine won a lifetime supply of pizza from pizza hut. They calculated his age, the average pizzas a person consumes per year, did some mathematical calculation and fed ex’d him a check for $37,000. In my book he won.”
The Most Popular House On The Block
“My aunt won a lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni from The Price is Right. She used to get them faster than she could use them, but now (understandably) she is sick of it so she just stockpiles them in her Rice-A-Roni closet and donates hundreds of boxes of them at a time. Yes. She has a closet full of Rice-A-Roni. The neighborhood kids love her.”
Like A Million Bucks
“A friend of mine found a bag of all gray M&Ms in 1997. They gave him a lifetime supply ($1,000,000) worth of candy. To this day he gets several boxes delivered to his doorstep weekly. For those who don’t remember, a bag of gray M&Ms was advertised to get you a million bucks, but only if it said so on the inside of the bag (fine print), even then, he was sorely disappointed when he learned it was just a million worth of candy.”
An Effective Bribe
“I won a year’s worth of burgers from Jack in the Box in college. They gave us 156 cards that would literally work for any burger or sandwich on their menu. I gained about 15 pounds and then I started to use them as trading tools to get my friends to do stuff. It started with, ‘If you run down to 7-11 and get me a Gatorade I’ll give you 1 burger card,’ then turned more into things like, ‘You do this stupid thing and I’ll give you 3 burger cards…’ it was glorious. The cards definitely didn’t last me a year.”
“My Eyes Popped Out Of My Head!”
“As a ’80s kid growing up in STL we had (have) a local brand of soda, Vess. This isn’t any typical brand of soda. With flavors like peach, kiwi strawberry, pineapple, blue raspberry and black cherry, you can see why a kid would fall in love with them. One year, Vess had a contest for a lifetime supply of Vess soda and my mother and I rushed to National grocery (a Regional grocery which is no longer around) in order to stuff the ballot box. Looking back on it now this was a questionable way of winning the contest, but I needed my Vess! To ensure the victory we took the remaining ballots and filled them out at home. I’m guessing Vess knew of this technique, so each store that participated got a winner. After being notified that we won, we pulled up to the Vess factory on Saturday morning first thing to claim our prize and were asked what kind of flavors we would like. I asked how many cases do we get and was told however many can fit in your Chevy Nova. My eyes about popped outta my head! I still don’t know exactly how many we fit in there, but I was sitting on cases and we couldn’t see out the rear window. On a side note, I will never forget the dude that helped us load up. Nicest guy in the world but he was beat up pretty bad. Having a black eye and cuts on his face it looked like he had a rough night before. That summer I was the soda crack king of the neighborhood. I think the cavity rate increased in our area due to everyone coming to the house for soda. You will find Vess soda still in STL in two major places, grocery stores (mostly Schnucks grocery close to the city and surrounding areas), and takeout Chinese places where there is always a small fridge by the register with a good supply of black cherry, peach and strawberry. Shrimp fried rice and Crab Rangoon never tasted so good with a peach Vess!”
Someone Stole His Prized Posession
“My friend won free chicken from Raising Cane’s for life (chicken finger chain). In order to claim his chicken, he had to present the card given to him. After a few months of free chicken, his wallet was stolen, putting an end to his free chicken. Somebody was VERY happy when they saw that card in his wallet.”
“They Told Me This Would Be…”
“Won a lifetime supply of knives. I guessed correctly how many sheets of paper the knife could stab through. After I broke the first two, I was told my third was my last one. Apparently, the knives were supposed to last a lifetime.”
Milking It
“It wasn’t a lifetime supply, but it was a year’s supply of flavoured milk. The company hosting the competition is based in Perth, Western Australia. The goal of the competition was to rename each flavour of milk to something uniquely Western Australian based on its colour. In my case, I renamed the spearmint flavoured milk, which is green, to Transperth, which is the public-transport service in WA. I came in second place for my submission and won a years supply of flavoured milk. Unfortunately, they couldn’t figure out the logistics of sending me the milk, so in the end, they just transferred the equivalent amount of money into my bank account (I think it was about $1200 or so). The money is long gone and well spent, and the irony is that I don’t think I spent any of that money on milk. Go figure.”
What A Deal
“I won a year supply of Whataburger. Won it in a raffle at the opening of a new restaurant. What it really was was 52 coupons for free Whataburgers. So basically one burger per week for a year. I was 14 I think when my family won this. I am now 17. Once a week my family would go to Whataburger and because of the terms of the coupon one person would get the free #1 combo and everyone else would get what they wanted but we would pay. Honestly, they still made money off of us doing this even though they gave away 52 free burgers. I am still glad though cause it gave us an excuse to eat Whataburger every single week and who wouldn’t want that?”
“It Was The Biggest Number I Knew”
“I won a ‘lifetime supply’ of jelly beans in the 2nd grade. My teacher had a giant jar of them on the table and tons of students guessed how many beans were in there. I remember thinking, ‘I’m just gunna write down the biggest number I can, that way I’ll stand the best odds of winning’ (kid logic) So I wrote ‘999’ because Zelda games taught me it’s the biggest number ever. There were 1,000 jelly beans. Students were amazed, teacher thought I was a savant. Jelly beans lasted me about 6 months and I think my mom threw the rest away.”
The Kid On The Mac ‘N Cheese Box
“My high school geometry teacher’s son won a contest where he was featured on boxes of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese and also got a ‘lifetime’ supply of it. He had a picture of it/a cut out of the box on his desk which was hysterical and all I remember was him complaining about how sick he was of mac n cheese.”
Major Disappointment
“Won a lifetime supply of free coffee from a brew shop in town. I guessed correctly how many beans were in a tall plastic cylinder. Shop closed 5 months later.”
“We Made A Game Out Of It”
“In college, I won a year of free Chik-fil-a. A new store was opening and the first 100 people got a free year of meals. Being broke college students, my buddies and I decided that we had to do this. We got there two days in advance and there were a ton of people. We waited though, as they did random name calls and if you didn’t check in you got removed from the list and someone else got bumped up. At the end when they were announcing people’s names we were getting worried as it was in the 80’s and we still didn’t hear our names. Thankfully the three of us got called … at 98 – 99 – 100. We ended up going so much we made a game out of it. At each Chik-fil-a the employees must say ‘my pleasure’ if you specifically say ‘thank you.’ So we tried to see how many times we could get the cashier to say ‘my pleasure’ (very Super Troopers-esque). The winner was my roommate at 7 ‘my pleasures’ in one conversation. Snippet of the conversation: Cashier: Welcome to Chik-fil-a! How is your day going? Roommate: Great, thank you very much! Cashier: My pleasure. How can I help you? Roommate: Does your chicken sandwich come breaded or grilled? Cashier: You can do either sir. Roommate: Oh perfect! Thank you very much! Cashier: My pleasure! ….so on and so forth.”
Thank You, Math
GWImages/Shutterstock
“I won what could be considered a lifetime supply of M&M’s from a contest some club in my high school held. It was a contest where you had to guess the number of M&M’s in this massive jar, so being the nerd I am borrowed a friend’s calculator and mathematically calculated the number in the jar. I was off by like 30 in a jar with over 16,000 M&M’s in it. I had M&M’s for years and could not put a dent it that supply. Eventually, I had to throw them out because M&Ms do get funky after a few years. To this day some 20 years later, I still do not care for plain M&Ms”
His Big Break
“I have a friend that did an Arby’s commercial years ago. They gave him an Arby’s card that can be used for up to $25 a day. It’s like a gift card that gets topped off daily. Only bad thing is he can’t save the credit to make a big purchase, it has a cap of $25.”
The Teacher Won This Time
“We had to write a one page essay on anything one year in class and my friend wrote about how he loved paprika to mess around with the teacher. She mailed it to some spice company and now they send him a jar a month and he hates it.”
The Greatest Form Of Repayment
“My dad, who is a doctor, helped deliver this woman’s baby. Turns out she was the owner of a local ice cream shop. She offered him free ice cream for life. He rarely ever takes us there, and when we do go, he never brings it up because he’s certain the lady forgot about her own offer.”
