How much should I expect to spend on craft services?

If I have a budget of say one hundred thousand dollars, how much should I expect to spend on catering for breakfast and lunch on my film production with crew numbered at 25 and actors (including extras) numbered at 100 and we're filming in NC?
 
How many days are you shooting? Are you really having 100 people every day?



I'm shooting 34 days and oh every day? No, I'm not shooting 100 people every day. Most of the days, the only actors on set would be about two - the two main characters. The rest of the people on set are the crew which equals to about 25, the rest of the days shooting includes the other minor character role actors like nurses, officers, a sheriff, a deputy, a doctor, a dad, the best friend, the judge, the lawyer things like that but to add up the numbers of people in the film entirely, I equaled one hundred.

However on a daily basis, catering would be for 25 crew members and it varies how many each day because some scenes only call for three people to work, some only call for two, some call for ten, some call for fifteen....lol this sounds confusing but do you get what I mean?
 
Catering is generally priced per person, reasonably you can expect that to be anywhere from about $10-100+ per person, depending on how extravagant you get with meals. If you keep it simple, you can probably get by at the lower end of that price without people feeling like they're being fed crap.

Craft services, all the snacks, water, coffee, etc that's just there all day long, again it's going to be dependent on the number of people on set (cast and crew) on any given day, but a lot of it can be carried over to the next day if it's unused the first day, for little bags of chips and the like anyway.

Assuming an average of 28 people per day, you're probably realistically looking at a couple hundred dollars/day for craft services stuff. More on the heavier cast days.
 
Catering is generally priced per person, reasonably you can expect that to be anywhere from about $10-100+ per person, depending on how extravagant you get with meals. If you keep it simple, you can probably get by at the lower end of that price without people feeling like they're being fed crap.

Craft services, all the snacks, water, coffee, etc that's just there all day long, again it's going to be dependent on the number of people on set (cast and crew) on any given day, but a lot of it can be carried over to the next day if it's unused the first day, for little bags of chips and the like anyway.

Assuming an average of 28 people per day, you're probably realistically looking at a couple hundred dollars/day for craft services stuff. More on the heavier cast days.


Ok my friend who's done work on short films said this and I thought about it too. What if I just went to Sam's club and got all the food that would be needed to prepare two meals on set for 34 days for the people I need and just got two people (preferably family) who knows how to cook and two servers who know how to serve to cook and serve the meals? Buying the food may cost cheaper at Sam's club than hiring a professional cater right?
 
That's usually the case. Not always. Do it right once, avoid having to pay for it twice (or three times as I've seen happen).

So I should then just go to Sam's club and get all the food that would be needed to prepare two meals on set for 34 days for the people I need and just get two people (preferably family) who knows how to cook and two servers who know how to serve to cook and serve the meals then?
 
You don't need to serve people - it's generally done buffet style.

In terms of cooking: you can do that, and that's what we did on my first feature - the director's mom and an assistant did the cooking. It was brutally hard and exhausting, though, cooking for that many people for that many days. We greatly appreciated her doing it, but I know she'd never do it again.

On my 2nd (recently wrapped) feature, we went with catering from local restaurants, combined with craft services (ongoing snacks fyi) arranged by designated crew members. We shopped around for the best deals, and ended up paying roughly (on average) $25 per day per person. It was a bit more money, but not hugely so, and cut way back on the stress factor.
 
WOW, I thought I needed servers like - and I know this sounds silly but like in elementary school with lunch ladies putting the food on the plate - never mind, lol

Anyway, yes I think I will get the food and get my brothers - (they're excellent cooks) to cook the food, I think in my mind, that would be cheaper than catering....
 
The short answer is "As much as you can afford." The better you treat your cast and crew the happier they will be. Happy people work harder and smarter.

You don't need a server, but someone to "manage" the craft table and handle "special" requests would be a huge benefit.
 
While I'm not sure what Sams Club is, yeah sure, why not. You just need to feed your people. It doesn't matter if you do it yourself or you get someone else to do it, as with every other task in filming. The only thing, the more tasks you take on yourself A). The less time you have to doing your own job and B). The more time it takes to complete the project due to inefficiencies.
 
While I'm not sure what Sams Club is, yeah sure, why not.
I think they have Costco in Australia, yeah? Basically the same thing. Big membership-based warehouse type store where you can buy all sorts of things in larger quantities for less. Like a 4 litre jug of mayonaise, for example. ;)


Yes, this is definitely an option. And you'll probably wind up somewhere around that $10/person rate going this way.. if you can find someone willing to do the food prep, and you're able to get the appropriate ingredients at sams, and not have to go to several places (as we did on the last short we did)..

It's a huge amount of work for someone to do. But it's infinitely more appreciated by the cast/crew to have fresh cooked meals vs ordering pizza or something like that.
 
Anyway, yes I think I will get the food and get my brothers - (they're excellent cooks) to cook the food, I think in my mind, that would be cheaper than catering....

It might be cheaper or it might be unbelievably more expensive, for two reasons:

1. Essentially as Sweetie stated, without the experience of acting as a craft service, there is a high probability of poor or incomplete planning/execution which causes distractions or delays to the actual task of shooting and therefore incurs the cost of overruns or a poorer quality film, either of which could be way more expensive than using professional craft services. For example, what happens if one of your brothers decides after a couple of weeks they don't want to do it anymore or if they become unreliable for some other reason (say illness)?

2. Preparing, cooking and serving food is inherently a health and safety risk, both in terms of food contamination and in terms of the cooking equipment. If something does go wrong who is legally liable? Probably you would be liable for not only the cost of any delay but also any legal or medical costs of any of the cast or crew affected. Furthermore, you might find yourself having to prove you were not in some way negligent of H&S issues in a court of law or potentially facing hefty fines, damages or worse. Again, hiring a reputable, commercial craft service should protect/indemnify you against these risks.

On the one hand, $100k is a relatively tiny amount baring in mind your cast/crew size and shoot duration and therefore there has to be some serious compromises somewhere in the filmmaking process but on the other hand you cannot make a decision based solely on the fact that your brothers are decent cooks and willing to do it for free (or relatively little). I'm not saying you absolutely must use a reputable commercial craft service, I'm saying you need to make an informed decision because employing a cast and crew doesn't just mean that you give them money to perform a task but that you accept a legally defined level of responsibility for their health & safety! This means that a part of your job is risk identification and management, which in turn means that if you're effectively delegating roles which involve H&S to volunteers/amateurs then you need to be aware that volunteers/amateurs will generally not have the training or professional experience to carry out the appropriate risk identification/management themselves. There are of course several options available between the extremes of a complete amateur/volunteer and an expensive, reputable, commercial craft service. For example, maybe one of your brothers would be willing to find and take a H&S catering course or maybe hire someone who is qualified to act as a professional craft service consultant for the first few days.

G
 
I think they have Costco in Australia, yeah?

Yeah, they're relatively new to this area, but I get what they are now. Sams over here is a $1 shop, which didn't fit what she wanted to do, but put in that perspective, it makes sense.

What APE said is 100% right.

There is another perspective and it all comes down to a balancing act. The first and foremost rules I've been taught is get as much of your budget on the screen. Spend a dollar and get a dollar (or more if possible) worth on the screen. Of course APE will want me to mention that this also includes sound, and it does. Sound is half the experience (right?).

So where does catering fall into this?

The same place as does the AD department and many other roles. Efficiency and safety.

There's a saying. An army marches on its stomach by Napoleon Bonaparte. Your workers will be more efficient if fed properly. Feed them poorly, or not at all and you could find problems ranging from workers performing below peak levels all the way to mutiny.

We had a small shoot last month where the caterer pulled out. Unfortunately for us, we were no budget, so options were limited. On top of that we were running with very minimal crew (We had a total of 4 crew) so in the end, the First AD did most of the work and recruited a neighbor to our shooting location to help. It hurt us in pre-production, so instead of concentrating solely on the filming, performances and technical issues, we were distracted also working out the catering and doing the shopping. Did it hurt the end product? I'd have to say, yes, it did. We were on a short time table as it was and the distraction hurt a lot, both in pre-production and during the production during the times when we lost our First AD to handle catering.
 
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