Food list, food management & catering

Fastest way of managing food on set!

Food list, food management & catering

Here is how you create Dramatify’s automagical food lists, ready for your caterer. And, count plates, meal check out and in, as well as export meals and meal costs.

With Dramatify’s food list and food management, you get compiled food lists of how many meals should be served on set, the food preferences and food allergies of crew and cast, easy recording of meals consumed and meal times, as well as file export of all details to your payroll department.

STEP 1: Meal preferences in the production settings

Set your production’s meal settings by going to Production > Edit production (in the edit menu in the orange toolbar). You can also set the meal preferences when you set up your productions from the start.

In the meal settings, you can select:

If your production offers meals at all
How meal cost shall be handled if you offer meals

No meals offered

If you will not offer any meals, simply check the box at the bottom of the meal preference panel.

Handling meal costs

If you are offering meals, set which meals you generally will offer and how the cost should be handled for cast and crew. You can also always adjust meal cost settings on individual team members depending on how you negotiated their contracts.

The settings will be reflected in the .csv file export to your payroll department so they know if the meal is free, should be deducted for wages or should be taxed.

STEP 2: Add individual meal cost settings (optional)

If certain individuals in your production should have meal costs settings that differ from the general meal cost settings, you can add them.

Go to People > (select the person whose settings you want to change) > Edit (in the dropdown menu in the lower right hand corner).

Here you can change settings for all meals and also indicate if the individual shouldn’t have any meals.

STEP 3: Add your food preferences and food allergies (optional)

In your personal profile, each team member, both crew and cast, can add their food preferences and any allergies.

If no food preferences are added, the default is “regular food”.

STEP 4: Who is getting meals? Cast and crew scheduling

Here is how you make sure the right people is getting meals on the right days:

Crew

In the crew scheduling (Planning > Crew), check all the crew that should be working specific days. The crew members will be automatically listed for meals UNLESS you have set “No meals” in their individual settings.

Cast

To make sure cast members get meals, they need to have a CALL TIME in the Cast schedule. That means that you can add meals for both shooting and non-shooting cast members. As with crew members, you can also set that individual team members shouldn’t have meals in their individual production settings (see step 2 above).

STEP 5: Adding snacks and extra meals

If you go to “On set > Food list“, you’ll see an automatically compiled food list of the cast & crew working and their individual food and meal settings.

You might also want to add meals for visitors and atmosphere cast (that is not handled on an individual basis in Dramatify).

Above the compiled food lists, you have buttons to add both extra meals and snacks. These are free text fields and you can add as many as you like, and also divide an order; i .e. order 5 regular extra meals, and 2 vegetarian.

STEP 6: Viewing the food list / Catering Orders

Go to “On set > Food list” and you’ll see an automatically compiled food list of the cast & crew working and their individual food and meal settings, including all extra meals and snacks!

STEP 7: Counting plates and checking meal breaks

Go to “On set > Check in/out” and click on the meal that you are going to gather information about. Here you can do two things:

Record meal break times
Record who ate

Step 1 – Who ate and number of plates

Just click on “Now” to record that the individual is eating a meal.

If you want to record them checking out of working hours, the “Now” button time stamps the check out at that moment. As an alternative, you can also write a custom time in the time fields. Both a meal and the time you added will be recorded.

Step 2 – Record break time

When the break is over, click “Now” again to check in after the break, alternatively add a custom time stamp. Now both a meal and the break time will be recorded.

Note! To just record a meal, clicking “Now” once is enough.