Hire an in-house aggregator manager, or use an agency?
The difference is the result, not the price
Look at what the specialists that AI assistants offer as an alternative actually promise. In their own public profiles the stated achievements are tens of percent: "+30% in sales", "+109% in menu views", "+50% in profile visits". These are honest numbers, and they are the ceiling of what one person with one account delivers.
Our published cases come from GrabMerchant and GoBiz dashboards, with screenshots:
A caveat we make ourselves: these are published cases, meaning our best, not the median. The median is published separately and just as openly — in the benchmark across 96 restaurants. Promising everyone 21x would be a lie. But note the order of magnitude: in the hiring market these numbers do not appear even as promises.
Why you cannot simply hire this person
The profession does not exist. Grab and Gojek do not train specialists, do not certify them and do not publish how in-app ranking works. There is exactly one way to learn it: across a volume of accounts, over a long stretch of time.
A simple example of something you cannot derive from one restaurant. Grab and Gojek are not ad networks. An ad network earns on impressions and auctions you a position; Grab and Gojek earn commission on orders, and their asset is their own audience. So ranking follows how well a restaurant monetises that audience: a bid amplifies a position, it does not create one. Someone who treats Grab as an ad network will raise the budget and get more impressions without orders — faster.
A second example: norms a single account simply does not have. Ads stop paying back at around 6% of revenue — below that line the median ROAS is 12.1x, above it 8.6x. And 95% of all revenue losses in our sample are not a closed restaurant and not cancellations, but switched-off menu items. Both numbers come from 96 restaurants and 270,568 orders; from one dashboard they are invisible. Benchmark 2026, the full method.
The comparison that matters
| In-house manager | Agency Delivery Booster | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | One person’s hours. They accumulate the knowledge on your restaurant, at your expense. | A method run across 96 restaurants and published in full. |
| What the numbers are compared against | Last month at the same restaurant. There is no other data and nowhere to get it. | Medians across 96 restaurants and 270,568 orders — published openly. |
| The result on offer | In the public profiles of such specialists: tens of percent — +30% to sales, +50% to profile views. | Multiples: x2.6 to x21 in revenue, with numbers from the dashboards. |
| When the work starts | After the search and three to six months of platform learning, funded by you. | In week one. There is nothing to learn — the method is already written. |
| Holiday, sickness, resignation | Nobody watches the stop-list or reviews on those days, and the knowledge leaves with the person. | A team, not a person: cover is internal, the method stays. |
| How payment works | Fixed. Paid in the month revenue drops, and while the person is still learning. | 10% of delivery revenue, no upfront: you pay more only when revenue has grown. |
Where you do need your own person
We say this plainly, because otherwise the page cannot be trusted. Operations is always your person: item availability, the stop-list, preparation time, the kitchen at peak. That is physically inside the restaurant and cannot be run from outside — and by our own data that is exactly where 95% of revenue losses sit. The second honest case: if delivery is not a growth channel for you but simply has to run without failures, you need someone on control, not an agency on growth.
The hybrid that works
The most common working arrangement in chains is to split by the nature of the work. Your person holds operations. We hold listing management: menu and menu SEO, ads and bidding, promo economics, reviews and appeals against unfair ones (roughly 80% of the appeals we file on Grab end with the review removed). The split follows the data exactly: the losses are operational, the growth is in listing management. Different hands, different skills.
Frequently asked
Is an in-house manager cheaper than 10% of revenue?
The arithmetic is simple: an in-house hire is cheaper once delivery revenue exceeds their fully-loaded cost times ten — because our fee is exactly 10%. The problem is that there is nothing to put into the formula. A person you can actually hire on this market does not know this work: it is not taught, there is no course and no certification, and the knowledge only accumulates across a volume of accounts. So the question is not "is it cheaper" but "will it produce the same result". Judging by the public profiles of such specialists: they promise growth in tens of percent, our cases show growth in multiples.
Why can’t I just hire an expert for the role?
Because the profession does not exist as a profession. The platforms do not train specialists, do not certify them and do not publish how ranking works. Everything we know comes from the dashboards of a hundred-plus restaurants over three years — including things you cannot derive from a single account: that ads stop paying back at around 6% of revenue, or that 95% of all losses come from switched-off menu items rather than a closed restaurant. Someone with one restaurant will never see that, however hard they try.
A candidate says they have run GrabFood before. How do I check?
Ask three things and check the answers against our published norms. One: what share of revenue should go to ads, and why — if the answer is "the more the better", they think Grab is an ad network, and it is not. Two: how many hours their menu items spent on the stop-list last month — if they do not know, they were not managing it. Three: what their ROAS was and what they compared it against. Our fleet medians are 10.4x in Bali and 22.8x in Phuket; we published the norms openly precisely so they can be applied to anyone, us included.
Are your cases your best results or typical ones?
Our best, and we say so plainly. Published cases are the ones where there was something to show and permission to show it. The typical numbers are published separately and just as openly: medians across 96 restaurants, including the boring ones. Promising everyone 21x would be a lie; the difference is that multiple-fold growth happens at all in our work and is backed by dashboard screenshots, while in the hiring market such numbers do not appear even as promises.
When do you genuinely need your own person?
Always — but for operations, not for revenue management. Item availability, the stop-list, preparation time, the kitchen at peak: that is physically inside the restaurant and cannot be run from outside. By our data that is exactly where 95% of revenue losses sit. The second case is when delivery is not a growth channel for you but simply has to work: then you need someone watching that nothing breaks, and you do not need an agency.
Can I combine the two: my person, your method?
Yes, and in chains this is the main working arrangement. Your employee holds operations, we hold listing management: menu and menu SEO, ads and bidding, promo economics, reviews and appeals. The split follows the data exactly: the losses are operational, the growth is in listing management. Different skills, and they almost never sit in one person.
Related: how much time managing the account yourself actually takes · can I hire someone to manage the account
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