Priced by the meal
Breakfast, lunch and dinner — or whichever of them run. You pay for the meals your crew eats, set out as a buffet or boxed; a family-style lunch at a table is quoted for your group.
Film · TV · Photo · Live Events
Production & crew catering in Santa Barbara
Breakfast, lunch and dinner for film, TV and photo shoots, live-event crews and conferences — prepared in our own commercial kitchen, brought to your site hot, and billed as one run on one invoice.
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See your itemized estimate in about two minutes — meals and staffing priced by headcount, with the service fee itemized for your production. No waiting for a callback.
What It Costs
What feeding a crew costs
$51–$57 PER PERSON, PER DAY
Breakfast, lunch and dinner, drop-off to fully staffed, tax & fees included: dropped off at the low end, fully staffed at the high end.
At 100 people, three meals a day runs about $51 per person, per day dropped off, or about $57 with our team on site — food, any staff on site, the service fee, sales tax and card processing included; rentals and any bar are quoted separately.
A 5-day weekday run at that size, fully staffed, comes to about $28,365 — on one invoice, reserved with one 25% deposit of about $7,091.
Corporate catering costs, itemized →
Price your run →How A Run Works
Three meals a day, one job, one invoice
Headcount by the day
Tell us the stretches the way you’d say them — “40 for the first three days, then 80” — and each day is priced at its own count.
Meals that change day to day
A load-in day with lunch only is charged as a lunch, not a full day — and a shoot day can run all three.
One invoice for the run
The whole run goes on one itemized invoice with one deposit, not a bill per day. Card processing is waived for check or cash.
On Site
What we bring, and what we need from you
You don’t need to arrange a kitchen for a crew — for crew feeding we don’t build one at all. Everything is prepared in our own commercial kitchen and arrives hot in insulated transport; on site we need only a modest staging footprint — a covered area, a few tables, power for hot boxes and coffee, and access to water. That is dramatically less expensive than a kitchen build-out, and it’s how we run most multi-day productions.
Plates, flatware, glassware, linens and — where a venue has no service kitchen — the kitchen equipment itself come from a rental house rather than from us, so they sit outside every number above. How much you need is decided by how the food is served: boxed lunches dropped off often need none of it, while a served meal on real tableware needs a full tabletop order. What rentals cost per person →
Where a meal has to travel — boxed lunches, drop-off — the packaging we reach for first is compostable, and drinks come in cans or bulk dispensers rather than individual bottles.
Beyond that staging footprint, we’ll ask the production for:
- Vehicle access and parking for our team, and site access for the times we’ve agreed.
- Trash: dumpsters on site, or our waste handling, agreed with you in advance for a fee.
- A day-of contact on site.
Good to Know
Production catering — your questions
How much does crew catering cost per person?
Three meals a day typically run $51–$57 per person, per day, drop-off to fully staffed, tax & fees included. At 100 people, three meals a day runs about $51 per person, per day dropped off, or about $57 with our team on site — food, any staff on site, the service fee, sales tax and card processing included; rentals and any bar are quoted separately. Our published corporate range, $17–$57 per person, per day, starts lower only because its low end is one boxed lunch dropped off, not a crew’s whole day.
Do you need a kitchen on site?
You don’t need to arrange a kitchen for a crew — for crew feeding we don’t build one at all. Everything is prepared in our own commercial kitchen and arrives hot in insulated transport; on site we need only a modest staging footprint — a covered area, a few tables, power for hot boxes and coffee, and access to water. That is dramatically less expensive than a kitchen build-out, and it’s how we run most multi-day productions.
Can the headcount change during the run?
Yes. Tell us the stretches the way you’d say them — “40 for the first three days, then 80” — and each day is priced at its own count. The meals can change day to day too: a load-in day with lunch only is charged as a lunch, not a full day.
How is a multi-day run invoiced?
On one itemized invoice for the whole run, not a bill per day. A 25% deposit reserves it and the balance is due 30 days before your first day; a run booked inside 30 days is paid in full up front. Card processing (3.5%) is in every figure here, and it is waived for check or cash.
How is a longer run priced?
Longer runs are quoted to the run: tell us your dates, the headcount by stretch and the meals each day, and the whole run is priced together on one estimate and one invoice.
The per-meal rates, the staffing arithmetic and a small-crew example are in our corporate catering cost guide. Office lunches, client dinners and company celebrations are on corporate event catering in Santa Barbara.
Your run’s number takes about two minutes.
The instant estimate asks for your dates, the headcount by stretch and the meals each day, and prices the whole run with the same engine behind our real proposals.
Get an Instant Estimate