Execution & Cost · Response
In reply to Mahendra · The Monk · SPF Foods · August 2026
Two questions · Two answers
You asked two things: whether the 12,000 can come out of what The Monk already spends rather than sit on top of it, and whether I will personally do the work rather than recommend it and wait.
Both answers are below, with the reasoning and the parts I cannot promise.
“How can your involvement be accommodated by rationalizing or replacing parts of our existing marketing spend rather than simply becoming another layer of cost?”
By taking the agency layer, the unmeasurable media and the platform promo budget into one seat. At day 30 you get a one-page marketing P&L with my fee inside it, and the target is a total that is equal to or lower than today’s. The plan itself needs no new media to run.
“How will you personally own execution and implementation rather than primarily identifying, recommending and managing them?”
I do the work myself. No agency underneath me, no hires, no sub-contracting, and nothing that needs you to supervise it. You get a live dashboard instead of status calls, showing what shipped, what is blocked and on whom.
01 · First, the obvious point
You said most of what the plan identifies was already on your list internally. I would expect that. Fifteen years and five branches means you can see your own business better than a document can.
02 · Question one · The money
I have not seen your invoices, so I am not going to put fake numbers against your spend. What I can give you now is my position on every line you named, and the rule I would apply to each. The figures go in at week one, from your actual contracts.
| Line | Today | My position | What changes, and why |
|---|---|---|---|
| External marketing agency | — your figure | Scope or replace | This is the direct overlap. An agency that plans, produces and reports is doing the layer I am doing myself. I would not cancel it on day one — that repeats the mistake of deciding by feeling. I put it on a 30-day scope with named deliverables, measure it in the weekly sheet alongside everything else, and give you a keep-or-cut recommendation at day 30 with the evidence attached. If it goes, it is the single largest source of the 12,000. |
| Radio | — | Pause, redeploy | Highest cost per unit of proof in the mix. It cannot be attributed, cannot be retargeted, and cannot be repeated per branch — which is exactly what a rinse-and-repeat system needs. If there is contracted inventory left, I would point the remaining spots at corporate catering rather than footfall. People in cars at 8am are the audience you can sell a 40-cover office lunch to. |
| Meta spend | — | Retain, repurpose | Same budget, different job. Today it buys reach. I would give it three jobs only: retargeting people who already touched us, delivery ads inside each branch’s catchment pointed at order.themonk.ae, and lead ads for catering. And I would stop any ad that lands on an aggregator link. That is paid media buying an order you will then pay commission on. |
| Aggregator marketing & funded promos | — | Cap and reprice | The most expensive money in the business, because three costs stack: commission, funded discount, and paid placement. I would keep a floor of placement — the platforms are real acquisition — but cap funded promos to a weekly number you approve and stop funding discounts on low-margin items. In a soft market this is usually the fastest cash saved with no revenue lost. |
| Internal marketing resource | — | Retain · I direct it | I am not replacing this person and I would advise against removing them to pay for me. They become the person I train into the playbook. On day 90 they own it. That is what makes this a pilot rather than a dependency on me. |
| TMbill | — | Already paid · turn it on | You are paying the licence already. Guest records, item-level margin, loyalty — most of it is either switched off or unread. Activating it costs no new money and it is the foundation of steps 01 to 03. This is the biggest piece of value in your current spend that is not being collected. |
| — | Consolidate | Five numbers on five phones become one business number with a shared list behind it. Guests keep dialling the same numbers. The list stops living in five handsets that leave when staff do. | |
| Loyalty | — | Consolidate | A loyalty scheme that does not join to the POS and the ordering site is a discount, not a retention programme. Same spend, joined to one guest record. |
| Direct ordering | — | Own it | Built and paid for, and currently a side door. Every order moved here keeps roughly 11.50 more out of a 58 AED ticket. Highest-margin lever in the business and it needs no new licence. |
| Corporate catering | — | Own the pipeline | Currently an email address and goodwill. I would run it as a named pipeline against offices inside each branch’s catchment, with follow-up that actually happens. |
| Reporting | — | Eliminate duplicates | Agency deck, plus platform dashboards, plus POS report, plus whatever the internal resource compiles. That becomes one weekly sheet with one set of definitions. The saving here is mostly your people’s hours, not cash, but it is real. |
The “today” column is deliberately blank. It gets filled in week one from your actual invoices and contracts, in front of you, and it may show that some of these positions are wrong. If radio is on a locked annual buy or the agency is on a long notice period, the money is not available at the speed I would like and I will say so rather than work around it quietly.
03 · The arithmetic of absorption
In a five-branch operation running an agency, radio, Meta and platform promos, any one of these three is usually larger on its own than the fee. I am not going to claim to know which one until I see the numbers.
The most likely single source. If the retainer is at or above 12,000, the fee is net-neutral on day one and the work gets done by the person who decided it, rather than briefed across to someone who did not.
Decision point: day 30, with evidenceRadio, plus any Meta spend buying broad reach. Not cut for the sake of cutting — moved onto channels that leave a trace you can follow to an order, so next quarter’s decision has evidence behind it.
Decision point: week 2, from the auditFunded discounts and paid placement on aggregators. Capped to an approved weekly number and pulled off low-margin items. Usually the fastest saving available and the least visible in a P&L, because it hides inside net payouts.
Decision point: week 2, from the auditCommitting to: at day 30 you get a single page showing every marketing line before and after, with my 12,000 sitting inside it, and a recommendation on each. The target is that total monthly marketing cost at day 30 is equal to or lower than it is today. That page goes on the dashboard, so it is not a claim made in a meeting.
Not promising: that I can guarantee the total lands lower, because I do not control your notice periods or contracted inventory. If the agency is on 90 days or radio is bought for the year, the money is committed and no amount of planning releases it early. What I commit to is the recommendation, the evidence, and the number on a page — on the date, whether it flatters me or not.
04 · On the market
You are right about the conditions. Summer, travel, thinner tourist traffic, and a cautious wider environment. In that market, buying new guests gets more expensive and keeping the ones you have gets relatively cheaper. The plan is already weighted to the second.
None of the ten steps needs an increase in media spend to run. The only paid element is retargeting, and that runs from the Meta budget you already have. If media went to zero tomorrow, the ten steps still get built.
Moving an order off a platform, raising what a solo order is worth, and bringing a lapsed guest back are all margin on volume you already have. None of them requires the market to recover first.
Measurement, guest capture and the branch playbook are easier to install when kitchens are not at peak. Doing this work in October costs more in disruption than doing it now.
The variable costs that do exist. WhatsApp conversation fees, which are fractions of a dirham and scale with sends. Printing for table cards and bag inserts, a one-off in the low hundreds per branch. Any photography, if we decide the ordering site needs it. All three get quoted before they are incurred and none of them is inside my fee.
05 · Question two · The hands
Organic and paid, socials, SEO, the website, and the operational architecture underneath all of it. Not finding the problems and passing them on — fixing them, checking what happened, and correcting until the thing works well enough to be written down and repeated at branch six.
06 · How you know it is moving
You should not have to chase me for an update and I should not have to interrupt you to prove I am working. So everything I do inside the business lands on one page, at one link, as it happens. You open it whenever you want — before a meeting, at midnight, on a Sunday — and you can see exactly what is moving and what is stuck.
Illustrative. The real one carries your branches, your numbers and the actual work log.
A dashboard that only lists wins is a highlight reel. Blocked items sit on it with a day counter and a name attached, including when the name is mine.
The monthly hour with you is for decisions, not updates. Anything that would have been an update is already on the page before you ask.
The cost line runs on it from day one — what is being spent, what got cut, and where that sits against the absorption target. The 12,000 question stays visible, not settled once in an email.
Built in week one, before the work it reports on. It costs you nothing and it stays yours — if this ends at day 45 or day 90, the dashboard and its full history go with the rest of the assets.
07 · What this leaves behind
A fractional CMO who becomes permanent by making himself necessary has failed at the job. Three things have to be true on day 90 for this to have worked.
They have been inside every step, not briefed on it afterwards. The playbook is written in language they use, and they have already run at least one full weekly cycle without me.
Listing, capture routine, WhatsApp list, ordering page, catchment targets and the weekly sheet, all live in the first week rather than improvised over six months.
Or the same, with more of it going to things that leave a trace. If it is higher and revenue has not moved with it, this did not work and the day-45 clause should already have caught it.
Next step
The whole cost question turns on numbers I have not seen. One hour with the agency contract, the radio buy, the Meta account and the platform statements settles whether the 12,000 can genuinely come out of what you already spend. If it can, this is a restructure rather than an addition. If it cannot, you will know that before you commit to anything.