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Everything, A to Z · Wagdi Abo Elliel · Partnership

He asked for a website. He got a partner.

  • The site
  • The software
  • The automations
  • The camera
  • The edit
  • What's next
One partner. Every discipline the brand needs, in one pair of hands.

Who he is, and how it started

Wagdi Abo Elliel is one of Egypt's best-known food creators, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. He's also an engineer who founded brands of his own. It started with a website. Now it's a partnership: I'm the person he calls for anything digital, on camera or off.

Who I work with

Wagdi Abo Elliel

  • Food creator
  • Hundreds of thousands of subscribers
  • Engineer
  • Founder of his own brands

How it started

A website

What it is now

A partnership

A card for Wagdi Abo Elliel: food creator, engineer, and founder of his own brands. The work started as one website and grew into a partnership.

How he talks

Learning his language first.

Before I cut a single frame of his, I studied how he talks. I read full transcripts of his videos, forty of his titles, and his posts. I had an agent pull all of it into one profile, then I read it myself for what actually makes him sound like him. The agent can gather. Deciding what matters is my part. He praises the food before he names it. He opens with ‘أيها السادة’ and closes with ‘ألف هنا’. When a brand appears, it lives inside a normal recipe, never outside it. Everything I make for him has to sound like him, in Egyptian Arabic, for his audience, not like an English lifestyle channel.

One video, the way he makes it

From his transcripts, titles, and posts

  1. Opens

    أيها السادة

    His greeting, first thing.

  2. Praises the food before naming it

    The food comes first. Its name comes after.

  3. The brand sits inside the recipe

  4. Signs off

    ألف هنا

    His closing line.

Everything I make for him has to sound like this.

A brand ad, in the edit

The story inside the mess.

For an ad I'm cutting now, the raw material was a thirty-minute continuous take and fifty-one clips of on-set chaos: retakes, directions shouted from behind the camera, friends talking over each other. I rebuilt the story from it: friends who each want a different dish, and Wagdi saying ‘أنا هتصرف’, I've got this, and ordering for everyone. The food shots were too weak to carry an ad, so I didn't pretend they could. The ad sells his energy and the service, not a dish.

Wide footage, vertical storyThe shoot was wide. The ad is vertical, so every beat is framed again around the moment that matters.

Fifty-one clips and one long take

The bar at the bottom is one thirty-minute take.

The story, in four beats

  1. 1Chaos
  2. 2Everyone orders
  3. 3The birthday
  4. 4“I’ve got this”
Retakes, directions from behind the camera, friends talking over each other. The pieces that carry the story are marked in the room's light.

A breakfast reel

Designing around what's missing.

A breakfast reel had no shot of people around a table. So the warmth had to come from what was there: the kitchen, the plates, his hands, the way he hosts. Seven phone clips became nineteen seconds, vertical, led by music, with no text on screen and his room sound kept low underneath. After another client told me text overlays got in the way, no text on screen became my default unless someone asks for it.

Seven phone clips

  • The parts I kept: one film, nineteen seconds, vertical
  • Music leads. His room sound stays low underneath.
  • No textNothing written on screen.
Warmth without a table shot: the kitchen, the plates, his hands, and the way he hosts.

Off camera

The whole partnership.

The camera is the part people see. Most of the partnership is off camera. My team and I are building his professional personal site, and a searchable, filterable home for everything he has published, organized so his audience can actually find a recipe again. We're building a software product on top of his recipes, something I haven't seen any creator offer. And we're building a community where his audience cooks what he films and takes part, connected to the public events he goes to.

Behind that are automations and AI agents across his media production and his brand collaborations. He also owns clothing and shoe brands, and we build the systems those businesses run on too. He explains what he needs once. We take it from there, whether the answer is a tool, a page, a system, or a film.

One briefHe explains it once
  • Personal site
  • Content directory
  • A product built on his recipes
  • Community
  • Automations and AI agents
  • Systems for his brands
  • Video and edit
In the room's light: the work that grows out of what he films.In ink: the rest of the work, off camera.

He doesn't have to explain his brand to five different people. He explains it once.

More on the film side: The editNeed the whole thing held? Bring me yours

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