From fragmentation to utopia: How Secret Food Tours unified global finance

Introducing Secret Food Tours

Secret Food Tours has a simple yet ambitious mission: to help travellers taste the city like a local. Operating in over 100 cities worldwide – from Paris and Tokyo to New York and Cancún – they connect visitors with authentic stories and locally loved food. With over 100,000 five-star reviews and accolades like the Sunday Times 100 and Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, the company has grown rapidly.

But behind the scenes, scaling a "high-volume, low-value" business model across dozens of borders created a complex financial web that threatened to slow them down.

Tannah Matus

CFO at Secret Food Tours

"I always tell people: there is a utopia of consolidation within financial operations. I don't want a card platform, a banking infrastructure, and an FX house. If I had it in one place, I could manage it all. Do you know what they call that? Airwallex."

The challenge

As Secret Food Tours expanded into new continents, their financial operations became increasingly fragmented. Paying hundreds of freelance guides, small restaurants, and ticket vendors in their local currencies was a logistical heavy lift.

The company relied on a patchwork of traditional banks and point solutions, which created three critical problems:

1. Eroded Margins: High, flat SWIFT fees on low-value transactions meant that bank charges could sometimes wipe out the margin on a single ticket.

2. Slow Payouts: Guides often waited up to 20 days after month-end closing to receive their earnings, with no guarantee of timing. For freelance guides relying on this income, the uncertainty damaged trust.

3. Operational Drag: The finance team was running 20 separate batch pay runs a month and struggling with manual reconciliation. Roughly 20–30% of transactions were left unreconciled, and up to £100k in unallocated cash was often swirling around the business, creating risk and obscuring visibility.

Tannah Matus, CFO, knew that to keep growing, they needed to stop fighting their infrastructure and treat it more like a lever for growth. To do that, they needed a single source of truth.

The solution

Secret Food Tours partnered with Airwallex to build what Tannah describes as "the utopia" – a consolidated global financial platform.

Consolidated operations: Instead of juggling multiple logins and banking relationships, the team moved their core operations to Airwallex. They replaced 20 fragmented payment runs with a single monthly workflow, paying guides across the globe from one central hub.

Local payouts and FX: By using Airwallex’s local payout rails, Secret Food Tours eliminated unnecessary SWIFT fees, paying partners like locals rather than international entities. This shift didn't just save money, it complemented their business model and enhanced their supplier relationships. Guides who previously waited weeks now receive their funds within 48 hours of the monthly pay run.

Empowering the team: The company rolled out Airwallex Corporate Cards to over 700 users – guides and operational staff. This enabled them to pay vendors directly, significantly reducing the reliance on out-of-pocket spending and the administrative burden of manual reimbursements.

Tannah Matus

CFO at Secret Food Tours

"For a guide, that quickness of getting money in your hand – tangible remuneration for your service – is game-changing. You come into our infrastructure now, and the money is available to you. We will get your working cash to you within two days. It builds a very low-risk, high-trust relationship."

The result

The impact of unifying their financial stack has been transformative, shifting the finance function from a reactive cost centre to a proactive growth engine.

• Restored Trust with Partners: Payout times dropped from weeks to days. By paying guides quickly and reliably after monthly closing, Secret Food Tours has strengthened its reputation as a preferred partner in competitive markets.

• Operational Precision: Unreconciled transactions plummeted from ~30% to less than 2%, freeing the finance team to focus on strategy rather than data entry.

• Risk Reduction: Unallocated cash on hand – funds that were previously unaccounted for during processing – dropped from £100k to roughly £5–10k, significantly tightening financial control.

• Confident Expansion: With a scalable infrastructure in place, the company can now launch in new cities without the headache of setting up local banking relationships from scratch.