Updated: August 29, 2026
Ask any crew what makes a long day tolerable and food comes up before gear. On a twelve hour Miami shoot in August, craft services is not a nicety. It is the difference between a crew that is sharp at hour ten and a crew that is quietly counting down.
It is also one of the easiest line items to get wrong, in both directions: underspend and the day drags, overspend and you have paid for a catered lunch nobody had time to eat.
Craft services and catering are two different things
The terms get used interchangeably by people outside production, and the distinction matters when you are budgeting.
Craft services is the continuously available table: water, coffee, snacks, fruit, electrolyte drinks. It runs all day and people graze from it between setups.
Catering is the sit down meal, usually lunch, served at a defined point in the schedule.
A short shoot may need craft services only. A full day needs both. Budgeting for one and calling it the other is how crews end up with a bag of chips at hour nine.
What Miami heat actually changes
Hydration stops being a comfort item and becomes a safety one. Crews working outdoors in summer lose fluid fast, particularly grips and anyone in direct sun with equipment.
Practical implications for the food and drink plan:
- Water everywhere, not just at the table. Cases positioned near the set, not a hundred metres away at base camp. If getting a drink costs five minutes, people skip it.
- Electrolytes as well as water. Plain water alone does not replace what is lost across a long hot day.
- Cold storage that actually stays cold. A cooler in Miami sun is a warm box by noon. Ice needs restocking, and somebody needs to own that job.
- Food that survives the temperature. Dairy heavy dips, mayonnaise based salads and soft chocolate do not work outdoors here. Fruit, nuts, granola and sealed items do.
- Shade at the craft table. A pop up tent turns the table from something people avoid into somewhere they actually stop.
These points sit alongside the wider heat planning covered in our note on set safety on a Miami video shoot.
Timing the meal to the schedule
The convention on longer days is a meal roughly six hours after call, and there is a reason it is a convention: past that point, performance drops noticeably.
Two scheduling realities complicate it. First, a meal break moves the whole day, so it belongs on the call sheet as a planned block rather than as something that happens when there is a gap. Second, gaps do not appear. If lunch is not scheduled, the day runs through it.
Where the schedule genuinely cannot stop, a walking meal is the alternative: individually packed food people eat while the next setup builds. It is not as good, and it is far better than nothing. Say which one it is on the call sheet so people can plan.
Feeding talent and clients
Count everyone, not just crew. Clients who came to observe, talent, venue staff who have been helpful, the security guard who let you in early. Running short in front of a client is a bad look for a small saving, and the marginal cost of a few extra meals is trivial next to the rest of the day.
Dietary requirements, collected in advance
Ask when you book, not on the morning. A simple line in the crew confirmation email covering allergies and dietary needs takes seconds and prevents someone spending lunch eating a bread roll.
South Florida makes this easy in one respect: the range of options available is wide, and most caterers handle vegetarian, vegan and gluten free without drama. What they cannot handle is being told at 11am.
Label everything at the table. Written labels on catering trays cost nothing and remove the guessing that people with allergies otherwise have to do.
Budgeting it honestly
Food is a real line item and should appear in the budget as one. Hiding it inside a general contingency means it either gets cut or gets paid for out of someone's pocket on the day.
The variables are crew size, day length, location and whether you are catering or ordering in. A studio day with a nearby restaurant is a different problem from a location day where the nearest food is twenty minutes away and the crew cannot leave.
Consider what the location allows before choosing an approach. Some venues prohibit outside food entirely or require their in house catering, and that requirement should surface during scouting rather than the morning of. Our note on wrap-out and shoot admin covers the receipts side, because craft services generates a surprising number of them.
Who runs the table
On a small shoot, a production assistant handles it alongside other duties. On a larger one, someone owns it: restocking, ice, clearing rubbish, keeping the coffee current.
The failure mode is assuming it runs itself. An unattended craft table at hour eight is empty wrappers, warm water and no coffee, which is worse than no table at all because people have stopped expecting anything from it.
Clearing up is part of the job too. Leaving a venue cleaner than you found it is the cheapest way to be invited back, and in a city where crews revisit the same locations constantly, that matters commercially.
Producing shoots where the day is planned properly
Crew care is producer work, and it shows up in the footage. A crew that has been fed, watered and kept out of the sun between setups makes better decisions at hour eleven than one that has not.
When we produce a shoot in Miami, meals are on the call sheet as scheduled blocks, dietary requirements are collected at booking, and somebody is responsible for the water and the ice rather than everybody being vaguely responsible. It is not the part of the job that ends up in the showreel, and it is a reliable indicator of how the rest of a production is being run.
If you are planning a shoot day and want it scoped realistically, including the parts that get left out of optimistic budgets, get in touch with your dates and location. More on how we approach production is on our about page, and further notes are collected on the blog.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I budget for food per person?
It depends on day length, location and whether you cater or order in. Price two options for your specific day rather than working from a general figure, and include drinks and ice separately.
Is craft services required, or just customary?
Water and breaks are a basic safety matter on a hot outdoor day. Beyond that, expectations vary by crew and by union status, so confirm what is expected when you book.
Can we just break and let people find their own lunch?
Sometimes, if you are somewhere with options within walking distance and the break is long enough to be real. On a location without nearby food, it means people do not eat.
Who pays for crew meals on a client shoot?
Normally production, with the cost reflected in the budget. Make it explicit in the estimate so it is not discovered afterwards.