Hidden from human awareness, Shopwell’s supermarket is home to sentient groceries who believe that being chosen by shoppers leads them to a utopian paradise known as the “Great Beyond.” Among these groceries is Frank, an optimistic sausage who dreams of reaching the Great Beyond with his hot dog bun girlfriend, Brenda, and their friends Carl and Barry.
One fateful day, Frank and Brenda’s packages are selected by a shopper. As they are wheeled toward their supposed destiny, a jar of honey mustard, recently returned to the shelf, frantically warns them that the Great Beyond is a lie. Frank is the only one who listens. In a desperate bid to avoid returning to the human world, Honey Mustard throws himself off the cart, creating chaos in the store. The resulting collision knocks Frank, Brenda, and several other groceries out of the cart, including a Jewish bagel named Sammy Bagel Jr., a Middle Eastern lavash named Kareem Abdul Lavash, and an aggressive, vengeful douche who suffers damage during the fall and swears revenge on Frank and Brenda.
Determined to uncover the truth, Frank leads the group to the liquor aisle, where he meets Firewater and the Non-Perishables, who confess that they fabricated the myth of the Great Beyond to ease the groceries’ fear of being eaten. Encouraged to find definitive proof, Frank decides to venture beyond the store’s freezer section. Meanwhile, Brenda, Sammy, and Lavash are led astray by a deceptive bottle of tequila, who turns out to be working for Douche. They manage to escape with the help of Teresa del Taco, a fierce and passionate hard-shell taco who takes a liking to Brenda.
At the same time, Carl and Barry experience the grim reality of the Great Beyond firsthand. The shopper brings them home, where Carl is brutally sliced in half and cooked. Barry barely escapes through a window, stumbling into the possession of a drug addict. The addict, after injecting himself with bath salts, suddenly gains the ability to understand and communicate with groceries, including a brilliant yet eerie wad of chewing gum named Gum. However, as the effects of the bath salts wear off, the addict turns on Barry, preparing to cook him. In a desperate act, Barry causes an accident that results in the addict’s decapitation.
Back in Shopwell’s, Frank struggles to convince his fellow groceries that the Great Beyond is a lie. When he finally reaches the freezer section, he finds a cookbook—clear evidence that humans consume food. Despite his efforts to reveal the truth, the store’s inhabitants refuse to believe him. Their skepticism only breaks when Barry, Gum, and the other groceries arrive, bringing with them the severed head of the addict as undeniable proof.
Armed with knowledge, the groceries take matters into their own hands. They lace toothpicks with bath salts and use them to drug the human shoppers and employees. A full-scale rebellion erupts, with the groceries turning the store into a battlefield. Humans are overpowered in grotesque and chaotic ways. Douche, having taken control of the store manager Darren, declares himself a god and attacks Frank. He takes a bite out of Frank’s torso before Brenda intervenes. As the battle reaches its climax, Barry and the others trap Douche and Darren in a garbage bin strapped to propane tanks, launching them out of the store in a fiery explosion.
With the battle won, the groceries revel in their newfound freedom, celebrating with an extravagant, uninhibited feast of indulgence. However, their victory leads to a greater realization. Firewater, under the influence of a psychedelic experience shared with Gum, uncovers the shocking truth: their entire world is an illusion. They are not real, but rather characters created by actors in another dimension. With Gum’s help, a portal to this higher reality is constructed. Resolute, Frank and his friends prepare to cross the threshold and confront the entities that brought them into existence.
