Catering & Logistics Services

Catering and logistics in China is a regional-cuisine problem before it is a production problem. The eight great regional traditions — Cantonese, Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan and Anhui — read as eight different supply chains, eight different cook teams and eight different on-set palates depending on where the shoot books. Our caterers and logistics coordinators come out of the Beijing and Shanghai craft-services scene that services Wanda Pictures, Huayi Brothers, Bona Film Group, Alibaba Pictures, Tencent Pictures and iQIYI Pictures, and they hold the on-site canteen contracts at Hengdian World Studios and Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis where most of the international work books.

Here is how this works in practice. Hot rice and three to five dishes per service is the Chinese-crew expectation; the international option layer. Eggs and bacon, salads, sandwiches, Western breakfasts and the gluten-free, vegan, halal and kosher overlays — runs in parallel. Halal certification matters for Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu locations and for Muslim crew anywhere in the country. The Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China sets the licensing floor, and our caterers carry the State Administration for Market Regulation business licenses and local health-bureau food-service permits that on-set inspections check.

On the logistics side our teams hold the basecamp, the trucks and the cold chain across the full country geography. Hengdian and Qingdao base out of the studio canteens. Beijing and Shanghai location shoots run mobile kitchens with refrigerated transport calibrated for the humid southern summer and the freezing northern winter. Remote work in Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, the Sichuan mountains and Xinjiang runs self-contained.

The picture on the ground is more specific. Generator power, water purification, full pantry against the supply-chain distance, altitude protocols on the Tibet routes, and Public Security Bureau coordination for the permit paperwork that lets trucks move across provincial boundaries. Gear transport, vehicle coordination, basecamp setup, load-in and load-out, and waste management run alongside the catering schedule against Chinese New Year and Oct 1-7 Golden Week shutdowns that the production calendar has to respect. Our coordinators speak Mandarin and English, post the day's menu in both languages, and keep the craft table refreshed across the twelve to fourteen hour Chinese shooting day so the crew stays fuelled from breakfast through second meal.