Food Recycler Mill Has a Kitchen Epiphany in Humorous Spots

Creative production agency Avocados and Coconuts recently produced four comedy spots for Mill, the award-winning food recycler. Conceived as part of Mill’s 2024 brand campaign, the TV spots hilariously live up to the campaign tagline, 'The Wonderful Feeling of Wasting Nothing,' showing how reducing food waste can be cathartic, life-changing, and maybe even help you find true love. The latest videos launched on digital and social platforms, following a multi-channel New York City-focused 'Make Food, Not Waste' campaign featuring a :30 spot, out-of-home, retail pop-ups, and activations including NYC’s first-ever zero-food-waste Restaurant Week with top restaurants and chefs throughout September and October.

“We wanted to connect with people on a personal level. So we looked to our experiences,” says Chris Brown, executive creative director at Mill. “Living with Mill, we've all had this 'aha moment.' Our kitchens are clean. Our garbage is empty. We don't feel guilty about what's living under our sink. We took the seeds of these real, lived experiences and turned the intensity up to eleven, creating a series of secret confessions, love stories, and ecstatic kitchen dance parties. There was one rule - they had to make us feel something, but they also had to make us laugh every time. Avocados and Coconuts helped bring all these visions to life in a flawlessly planned production sprint.”

Tasked with streamlining the shoot workflow while optimising production value, Avocados and Coconuts shot all the spots in just four days in various locations around Los Angeles. For added efficiency, they cast talent in multiple roles across the spots, which required careful planning for a matrix of personalities and chemistry checks between actors. Unique camera angles and movements, as well as selective use of wide-angle lenses and extreme close-ups, helped to create visual intrigue, always in service of the actors and their performances. 

“Each of the scripts amped up the passion that the characters feel about the problem of food waste to a kind of absurd level, giving the actors roles they could really sink their teeth into to find the sweet spot where the humour lives,” says Amani King, executive creative director of Avocados and Coconuts. “Selling the gag required a strong cast who could authentically convey that feeling - no matter how absurd the situation was - through the dialogue, their physicality, and facial expressions. We wanted the absurdity to live right alongside a genuine relatability.”

While the 'Make Food, Not Waste' spot for the New York market takes a different tone than the 'Wonderful Feeling' campaign, Avocados and Coconuts approached the production with the same creative efficiencies by sharing talent and location. The video features a dinner party in action and all the fun (and messes) that come with it through a pacy, motivated sequence of food prep, hosting, and clean-up, where Mill is shown as an essential kitchen appliance for the modern home chef.

Stylistically, the production design balanced upscale residential spaces with a warm environment, reflecting the campaign’s diverse target demographic. From there, the team pushed the individual sensibility of each spot to suit: a darker, moodier vibe for a confessional-style spot and a more romantic tone for one centred on a date night.

“We've always felt extremely aligned with Mill's ethos as a company and their creative team's vision and aesthetic sensibility,” concludes Dalia Burde, founder and executive producer of Avocados and Coconuts. “When you immediately connect with the concepts and the humour straight off the page, it's a great place to start our work from.”