What happens if a guard catches me?

Your character triggers ragdoll physics, drops carried ingredients, and respawns at your base.

Safe Hauling Guide: How to Outrun Guards & Avoid Losing Food

When you pick up any ingredient in the wild, the game flags your character with Stealing [Ingredient Name]!:

Guards within range immediately acquire target lock and begin running directly toward you.
Low-tier rabbit guards in Zone 1 have relatively slow chase speeds and can be outrun with basic treadmill training.
High-tier guards (such as horned unicorns in Epic zones or red dragons in endgame zones) sprint much faster and will catch you unless you use evasion tactics or active sleep buffs.

The single most valuable mechanic for solo haulers is the Relay Haul Strategy, using the red on-screen DROP button:

Monitor the Gap: As you carry an Epic or Legendary ingredient home, turn your camera backward to watch the pursuing guard.
Execute the Drop: When the guard closes within dangerous strike distance, tap the DROP button.
Aggro Reset: Dropping the ingredient immediately ends your Stealing! alert status. The guard's AI loses its chase condition and starts walking back to its original patrol spawn point.
Re-grab and Repeat: Wait for the guard to turn its back and walk several studs away, then pick the ingredient back up and sprint forward another segment toward your base.

Your restaurant plot is protected by a server-enforced Safe Zone threshold:

Once your character's hitbox crosses the red perimeter line demarcating your restaurant entrance, guard pathfinding terminates completely.
Guards will turn around instantly at the gate line and cannot strike you inside your plot.
Even if a boss is inches behind your back, diving over the threshold secures your ingredient completely.

The game offers an All Sleep ability (visible as a 60-second timer button on the UI):

Activating All Sleep puts every hostile guard and boss on the map to sleep for exactly 60 seconds.
The Golden Rule: Never spend the full 60 seconds searching for ingredients in distant biomes. Always budget at least 25 to 30 seconds for the return run back to your base. If the 60-second timer expires while you are still deep in boss territory, you will face an instant point-blank chase.