Catering plan template

What this is about

Nothing empties a set faster than a meal that arrives while the gaffer is still rigging, or twenty portions for twenty-eight people because the extras were counted as guests. The plan exists to hold two numbers steady against a moving day: how many mouths, and at which minute they can actually stop. Both come from elsewhere — headcount from the crew list plus cast, extras and visitors; timings from the shooting blocks the first AD is protecting. A catering plan is therefore mostly an act of reading other documents correctly and committing to a cut-off before the supplier does the shopping.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Headcount per day broken into crew, cast, extras, clients and visitors, because only the first group is stable across the whole shoot
• Meal windows anchored to the shooting blocks rather than to the clock, with the break placed where a setup ends and not mid-relight
• An allergy and diet register kept by name and collected at booking, not by counting hands in the production office on day one
• Standing supply that runs all day: water, hot drinks, fruit and something salty, with a person responsible for refilling it
• The serving logistics for each location: where the tables go, power and water access, waste removal and cover if it rains

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Pull the daily headcount from the schedule: crew for the day plus the cast called, the extras booked and any client or agency attending.
2. Agree the meal windows with the first AD against the shooting blocks, and write down which setup is finished before the break starts.
3. Collect dietary requirements when you book people, keep them in one list by name, and carry that list forward to every shooting day.
4. Brief the supplier with quantity, arrival time, exact address, access route and where they may park while unloading.
5. Set an order cut-off — the point after which a change costs money — and tell the departments when it is, in writing.
6. Organise serving: tables, shade or cover, hand washing, waste separation, and who clears the area before the next setup.
7. Reconfirm quantities the day before against the current call sheet, because the extras count is the number that always moved.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Counting crew only and forgetting extras, drivers, the location owner and the two people from the client who said they might drop by
• Diet information living in a chat thread, so the vegan meal exists on three shooting days out of nine
• A break placed by the clock into the middle of a lighting change, which either kills the appetite or kills the setup

With TillyGen

Because TillyGen already knows who is called on which day and where the setups break, it derives headcount and realistic meal windows per shooting day instead of asking you to count them again.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.