Georgia Magazine - September 2017 - 55

COURTESY HANNA BROTHERS

years ago and never considered catering until Deaderick was asked
to feed a small crew of 100 people,
headed by comedian Jeff Foxworthy.
"It was one meal a day for a week,
and it wasn't that difficult," Deaderick
recalls. "In fact, it was a lot of fun.
Within a few days, I got a call for another job that wanted breakfast and
lunch served from a mobile kitchen. I
said yes, then immediately had to get
on Craigslist to find a truck!"
With a kitchen-on-the-go, Deaderick began accepting bigger gigs,
working with the crews of "The
SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of
Water" and "Baywatch" and learning
the ropes as he went.
"Frankly, if I'd known the scope
of it, I might have been too scared
to take it on," he says with a laugh.
"You have to be able to prepare different menus every day, because
you're feeding the same crowd, and
they get tired of the same things. You
have to be able to do various cuisines
and creative riffs on them. In Savannah, we don't have access to some
cuts of meat in the variety and quantities we need to feed 600 people, so
we're limited to local fresh fish and
produce. And you can't make food
that's too heavy; everyone is working
hours on end, so you need to have
plenty of salads and green vegetables
that don't make them sleepy."
Caterers often find themselves
devoting significant time to the logistics of getting ingredients in the
vast amounts required. As an ex-

A recent production of "Magic Mike XXL," with more than
1,000 extras, required more than 2,000 meals a day.
ample of the volume of food that
film crews devour, Deaderick's budget for "SpongeBob" was just under
$1 million to serve 700 meals a day to
350 crew members. A recent production of "Magic Mike XXL," with more
than 1,000 extras, required more than
2,000 meals a day. On the set, everyone eats at the same time, so the
food has to be ready and replenished
within a short span.
"It requires a huge amount of
preparation," Deaderick says. "When
the crew walks in, there's food flying
in every direction. On 'Magic Mike,'
we had 10 separate lines for the same
food so we could feed everyone in
30 minutes."
A typical crew lunch is akin to
an upscale wedding, Deaderick says,
and breakfast can be as elaborate as
any five-star buffet. Crews have raved
about his fried chicken and tacos
stuffed with steak or shrimp, which
are usually part of a lunch spread,
along with three meats, a variety of
veggies and starches. Also featured
are salad bars and stations for pasta,
meat-carving and sautéing seafood.
The morning kicks off with platters
of scrambled-egg casseroles, steelcut oats, grits, hash browns, bacon,
eggs Benedict, pancakes, waffles,
hard-boiled eggs, lox, yogurts, parfaits, juices and pork, chicken and
turkey sausages. A chef
will create made-to-order
omelets, and a "toaster
table" is loaded with cereals and breads. But it's
still not unusual to have
someone make a special
request.
"Anyone can walk

up to the truck and say, 'I really want
a breakfast sandwich on Texas toast,'"
Deaderick says. "We make a lot of
breakfast burritos. We're like a Waffle
House on wheels."
Like Deaderick, the owners of
Hanna Brothers Film and Event Catering got into the business by chance
20 years ago. Jim Hanna was working
with his brother, Joe, in their Florida
restaurant when a film crew for the
old "B.L. Stryker" TV series with Burt
Reynolds took over the space next
door.
"They asked us to do the third
meal for the crew," Jim Hanna recalls.
"A year later, there was so much catering business, Joe sold the restaurant and went to work for a catering
company based in New York. He did
a lot of work there and in California,
and I went with him wherever he was
needed."
After Hanna graduated from college, the brothers opened their own
catering operation, and after years
of heading to Georgia on jobs, they
opened a location here three years
ago to serve the state's mushrooming
movie industry. Today, the company
leases space at Pinewood Studios in
Fayetteville and also runs an office
in New Orleans. But the food magic
happens in a fleet of trucks that head
out to sets around Georgia.
"Picture a FedEx truck with custom-built ovens, fryers, the works,"
Hanna says. "We also have a trailer
that holds dry goods, tables and
chairs. We also have a third we use
as a salad bar truck that does breaks
and lunch. It's important to be supermobile, because the filming takes
place in different locations-some-

Eat like the crew

Hanna Brothers sets up multiple serving
stations to feed a large number of crew
members in a short amount of time.
September 2017

Want to get a taste of some of the dishes served up on the sets of Georgia-based
films? Stop by one of these restaurants affiliated with Georgia's caterers to the stars.
* Grow, Macon; facebook.com/growrestaurant, goodtogomacon.com
* Hanna Brothers Studio Café, Fayetteville; hannabrothers.com/cafe
* Starland Cafe, Savannah; starlanddining.com
More online at www.georgiamagazine.org

http://www.facebook.com/growrestaurant http://www.goodtogomacon.com http://www.hannabrothers.com/cafe http://www.starlanddining.com http://www.georgiamagazine.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - September 2017