Production Food

Craft service refers to the catering done for the cast, crew, and extras working for film and television production companies. A craft service table is a table of snacks set up either on set or on location. Cast, crew, and extras choose snacks and beverages from the table buffet-style.

Full meals are not usually provided on set as there are often many restaurants in the area and studios have at least a coffee shop. The lunch break is typically an hour, unlike the half hour usually given for on location shoots. Situation comedies, or sitcoms, do typically provide catered hot meals once a week, on live taping days. The cast, crew, and extras eat a few hours before the show starts taping.

Craft service items vary widely depending on the production firm's film budget. Most craft service tables include a mixture of 'junk' food such as chips and doughnuts as well as sandwiches, fruit or vegetable platters, cheeses, muffins, and pretzels or microwave popcorn. Usually hot water is available to prepare instant soup and hot chocolate mixes as well as tea. Most craft service areas include urns of coffee as well as sodas and juices. Breakfast craft service offerings usually include fare such as bagels, toast, muffins, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, juices, and coffee.

Sometimes catering trucks are used for bigger productions with a lot of extras. The extras may or may not get sandwiches from a craft service table while the cast and crew receive hot meals. Screen Actors Guild (SAG) members wait in line before other extras, and cast and crew wait ahead of all extras. This is not purely a matter of ranking order, but also scene scheduling. Extras, unlike the cast, and especially the crew, are not needed on set all of the time.

Check QuickFilmBudget.com for a sample film budget.

Craft Services

I usually recommend that filmmakers focus on spending their film budget in places that will show on the screen. However, the most underrated account for impacting the productivity and goodwill of the crew is craft services aka food! I once produced a film where in the middle of the shooting schedule, the crew started to become unhappy about the long hours of work. The next day when the crew arrived on set, they saw an expanded craft services table filled with everyone's favorite snacks. Their attitudes completely changed and everyone became much more productive. Food has that effect on people. Obviously, you don't need to serve caviar but bringing in Starbucks coffee once or twice and adding people's favorite snacks goes a long way.

Check www.QuickFilmBudget.com for a sample film budget.