The Production Assistant's Guide to the Lunch Run

On Scriptnotes, John and Craig asked our listeners for their advice on the one ubiquitous and foundational experience of every early job in the entertainment industry: the lunch run.

And like the good PA’s you are (or used to be), wow did you all deliver.

We were flooded with emails packed with great advice. That’s not surprising – lunch runs are a rite of passage that can go wrong so easily, so often. Anyone who has ever been an assistant, PA, runner or even intern (it’s okay, we pay them now!) has to figure out how to not screw up this foundational task in order to move up the ladder towards their dream job, and even though it seems like it should be easy... it’s not.

Below is the compendium of what was written in, a sort of collective consciousness braided together from dozens of lunch-run survivors’ hard-won knowledge. These people had eight iced coffees tip over in their backseat so you won’t have to.

Picking a Restaurant

• Compile a list of options. Scout the neighborhood you are working in, and ask around the office to get a vibe of what everyone likes. Look for restaurants that have a good balance of healthy and greasy options. Prioritize restaurants that allow you to order online.
• Make sure to ask about dietary restrictions. The person who’s allergic to peanuts can somehow still be confused about the Thai peanut salad.
• Keeping the cuisine varied and relatively healthy tends to make everyone happy. Keep track of what people like and incorporate those favorites into your rotation.

Max: Our production secretary had a lunch binder divided into tabs by region of the world (alphabetized within each region). We would rotate around the world, and when someone would groan about a food choice, I’d kindly remind them that we hadn’t eaten a Middle Eastern dish in 10 days and that this place actually had one meal they’d like.

Nora: The key is balance. In the course of a week, I’ll rotate a regular fan favorite, one day of a heavier cuisine, a yummy sandwich day, and salad/light/healthy places, and then on Fridays I like to do a family style feast and try an international cuisine. We’ve done Ethiopian, Indian, Thai, and dim sum to name a few. (I also am lucky to have a room of adventurous, open minded eaters.)

• No Tacos. LA has great tacos, but they are single handedly the most painstaking lunch order to place (HomeState seems to be an exception to this rule).

Favorite LA Restaurants for Writers Rooms

• Ggiata — Italian-American deli. Hot and cold sandwiches, incredible arancini.
• Sycamore Kitchen — Casual New-American bakery-café. Salads, sandwiches & pastries.
• Oui on Melrose — Comfort-food sandwiches, burgers and kachapuri.
• HiFi Kitchen — Fast-casual Filipino-inspired rice bowls, lumpia, and other homestyle dishes.
• Al Basch Chicken — Lebanese-style Mediterranean grill. Kebabs, wraps, and mezze plates.
• Superba — All-day café, bakery, and coffee bar. Fresh, California cuisine.
• Joan’s on Third — Gourmet comfort classics, salads, and sandwiches.
• Kismet — Highly-decorated Middle Eastern/California cuisine, their rotisserie chicken plates are to die for and a lot of bang for your buck.
• Great White — Australian-owned coastal café. On the pricier side, but fresh, local and delicious.
• Olive and Thyme — Mediterranean-influenced café. Seasonal salads, sandwiches, and family-style comfort dishes.
• Larchmont Wine & Cheese — Famous French-style baguette sandwiches. Phone order only.
• Clark Street — Artisan bakery turning out naturally-leavened sourdough breads, pastries, and café staples.
• Alfalfa — Health-minded eatery specializing in creative salads, grain bowls, and seasonal specialty doughnuts.
• Duke’s Cafe — Neighborhood diner-style café with an eclectic mix of breakfast burritos, sandwiches, and global comfort staples.
• HomeState — Texas-inspired breakfast tacos with house-made flour tortillas (and corn tortillas for the gluten free).
• Ono Hawaiian BBQ — Quick-service Hawaiian plate lunches. Grilled meats, rice, macaroni salad, and island favorites like Spam musubi.

Taking the Order

• Take everyone’s order seriously.
• Make a list. Or a spreadsheet if the group is five or more people.
• Include a link to the menu and PDF copy in your lunch email. Even if you have to make the PDF yourself. Do not trust people to find the menu themselves. They will ask you to get items that do not exist, or are out of season.
• Put your phone on do not disturb if you’re passing it around to get orders.
• Double-check your order when you place it over the phone.

Kelly: It was my first day ever working on a Netflix show. I was asked if I could order lunch for a ton of people who were coming in two days for various meetings, make up tests, you name it. This ‘production office’ was in the smack middle of nothing and the best choice everyone agreed on was Quiznos. I went through their website and made an order for $409.75 worth of food. I then called the store to confirm they had the order. They confirmed it. My office signed off on the payment and I checked it off my to-do list.

The next day, Quiznos called. Am I sure this is the order? Yes. We even walked through the precise numbers of sandwiches and salads. I hung up, a little confused, but happy at least that the order was definitely confirmed. The next day, two PAs drove out to pick it up, but when they got there… there was a problem. The Quiznos made 4,000 sandwiches. Not $400 worth of sandwiches. The sheer number of sandwiches would not fit in the VW Golf we’d sent out. And not only that, but they were asking us to cover the cost.

To this day I have no idea what happened. I genuinely cannot fathom what prompted the error. But incredibly, and after an obnoxious debate, Netflix did pay for it — and we disseminated the excess food to an unhoused encampment, putting an odd and unfortunate situation to good cause.

Despite still having accurate receipts, I was never allowed to order lunches again. (Thank god).

Timing

• Hole-in-the-wall or family-style restaurants can be slow during the day. Place your order for 15-30 minutes earlier than you need it.
• However, Sweetgreen is insanely fast*, so order closer to the time that you need it to make sure your food is fresh.
  • *Unless it's Sweetgreen in Burbank. They're usually running an hour behind, so have your pickup time there be an hour earlier than you would normally pick up.

Picking Up

• Label the lunches by name. This is important. Bring a Sharpie. Use your spreadsheet. Do it before you get back to the office, as people get antsy and want their food right when it gets there.
• Do a count before leaving the store. Double or triple check.
• Remember utensils. And chopsticks if appropriate.

Delivering

• Drive slow so nothing tips over.
• Get a giant plastic bin and keep it in your trunk to shuttle food back to the office. Just a cheap one from Target. This is especially helpful for coffee, drinks, liquids.
• Have lunch on time. Writing while hungry is impossible, so being late with lunch means wasted time in the room.
• Hand everyone their lunch. It makes a good impression and ensures no one takes the wrong item. If someone with dietary restrictions doesn’t get the right order, you’re the one who has to go all the way back for a new one.

General Advice for Assistants, PAs, Runners and Interns

Do your job well even though it sucks. Everyone knows it’s not your life’s ambition to be a gofer, but if you can’t get a lunch order right, nobody’s going to trust you to do anything else.

That said, when you screw up, forgive yourself and move on.

Volunteer for everything. If someone asks you to do something, do it. And do it with a smile on your face. There will be people that will abuse your generosity, but you’ll quickly figure out who those people are and how to avoid them. The good ones (and they are out there) will recognize your effort and will give you opportunities to do other things, provided you can satisfy objective #1.

Try to befriend someone in accounting, no matter your position. You’ll get less of a slap on the wrist for tipping or spending too much.

Try to split the lunch runs with another PA. Or, make an alliance:

Alana: I have an alliance with the other low level assistant. We tag team lunch pickups because parking sucks. I drive, they run in and get the food.

My alliance and I use the time in the car on lunch pickups to catch each other up on anything happening at the office that the other may not know. This is a cone of silence. What’s said in the car does not leave the car.

It may seem obvious, but knowledge is power as a low level assistant. The more you know, the more useful you are. The other assistants are not your enemies, they are your greatest allies. Make each other look good. You only have each other.

A runner position is a foot in the door, not the first step on a ladder. What you get out of it depends entirely on who you work with and how you treat each other.

Make time to meet up with other PAs and assistants. Just like you, these people will not be assistants forever. They’ll rise up the ranks just like you, and you’ll be able to help each other along the way.

And no matter who you are, it is important to remember, especially when you are not the one getting lunch, that mistakes happen on all ends, and never to assume the competency of anyone.

The PA fulfilling the order is likely very intelligent and feels the task is beneath them, but it’s weird how much IQ, EQ, and street smarts it actually takes to do it properly.

Our endless thanks to everyone who wrote in!