Khalid is at a JBR ramen spot at 1pm on a Tuesday. He has filmed four shots, eaten about half the bowl, and his next venue is in Business Bay at 3pm. February closed for him at 19 orders and AED 22,420 in revenue. AOV: AED 1,180.
The order mix
- 11 venue visits at AED 1,400 each (Reel plus Stories included)
- 5 standalone Reels filmed at home at AED 900
- 2 full-week takeover packages at AED 2,200
- 1 menu launch shoot for a Sharjah cafe at AED 1,800
Where the bookings came from
Khalid checks his analytics dashboard once a week. The traffic split for February surprised him.
- 63 percent: Instagram bio link (his main funnel)
- 22 percent: WhatsApp link sharing (when a venue manager asked for his prices)
- 9 percent: a Sharjah F&B WhatsApp group where two restaurants found him
- 6 percent: a TikTok he had stopped posting on six months ago
The 80/20 inside the AOV
He noticed something: venue visits were 58 percent of his orders but 69 percent of his revenue. Standalone Reels were the easiest to fulfil but the lowest paying. He has decided to push the venue visit listing higher on his storefront and price standalone Reels up to AED 1,050 for March.
I used to chase Reels because they felt scalable. Then I checked the numbers and realised the venue visits were paying me twice as much per hour.
— Khalid, Dubai-based F&B creator
What he tracks every month
- Orders count and AOV (the two most important numbers)
- Traffic source breakdown
- Repeat customer percentage (was 31 percent in February)
- Hours worked per order
Repeat customers were the quiet win. Five of his 19 February orders were re-bookings from venues who had hired him before. The cost of acquisition on those was effectively zero.