Like so many winning ideas before it, the concept of Secret Food Tours was born in the pub.
“Nico and I were both working in Shoreditch and we kept bumping into each other over drinks in our local, the Drunken Monkey,” says Oliver Mernick-Levene, who co-founded the company with Nico Jacquart. “He was a serial tech entrepreneur, I was in marketing and we both wanted a change of lifestyle.”
One of the pair’s better beer-fuelled thoughts was for a “food crawl – a pub crawl but for food”. This guided walk with a difference would blend local culture and history with a tour of gastronomic gems – the kind of special places that definitely aren’t on the tourist trail.
“We thought it was a really cool idea, like when you have friends and family visiting and you show them round your favourite places to eat,” he says.
Great ideas, however, don’t always make for great businesses. To test the concept, Frenchman Jacquart created an itinerary of his favourite foodie spots in Paris, then used his tech skills to knock up a quick and dirty website and buy a few Google AdWords to promote it.
“At the time no one really knew what a food tour was,” says Mernick-Levene. “But even though the website was a bit clunky, when we launched our new product we sold £400 worth of tickets within an hour. That’s when we knew we were on to a winner.”
That was back in 2013. Now the business has a super-slick tech platform (also Jacquart’s brainchild) that manages tours in 70 cities across the globe and allows it to tap into the huge international appetite for experiential tourism.
The best way to get under any city’s skin is by sampling its cooking. So what if a guide could show you the culinary gems only locals know? Two friends started a company to find out
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Secret Food Tours founders Nico Jacquart, left, and Oliver Mernick-Levene
Secret Food Tours’ anticipated sales this year
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Over the course of a pleasant afternoon stroll with like-minded people, customers can sample everything from the best pizza and gelato in Naples to superb saké and sashimi in Osaka. Each tour is garnished with a smattering of history and the trademark specially chosen “secret” dish that typifies the locale.
An army of friendly and knowledgeable freelance local guides share selected hotspots with parties of ten or so customers at a time, each of whom pays between £70 and £100 for the privilege. With tips – plus incentives for getting good reviews and collecting email addresses – Mernick-Levene says guides can earn more for a tour than in a six-hour shift in some other sectors, and have fun doing it.
“They are only working for three hours at a time and they are enjoying themselves – lots of them do this in their spare time.”
Secret Food Tours was ranked 22nd in the latest Sunday Times 100 list of the UK’s fastest-growing privately held companies, sponsored by Barclays Private Bank. The venture now anticipates sales getting on for £20 million this year, and has more than 300,000 customers.
What’s more, if all goes to plan, it will be in 100 cities by the end of 2024. “It’s very scalable,” says Mernick-Levene. “We’re the largest food experience company in the world. We expect to grow at 30 cities a year; within larger cities, you can have four or five different tours.”
Clever tech also enables them to pick the most lucrative new cities to add to their portfolio, Jacquart explains. “We look at the number of visitors, the competition, and trends in food and tourism. It all goes into one big algorithm. We have a long list of cities that we want to go to, which are all ranked.”
The system has produced some surprising results but the pair have learned to trust it. “Anyone can pick London, Rome and Barcelona, but when the data was saying Austin, Texas, we were like, ‘What’s in Austin?’” says Mernick-Levene. “In fact, it has turned out to be a great city for us.”
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There are lots of tourism firms with higher revenues but whose bottom line is nothing like as strong
Now the co-founders spend much of their time scoping out new tour locations – with their shared love of travel and food, Mernick-Levene says it’s almost too much fun to be work. “On one trip, Nico said to me, ‘I’ve been on worse vacations than this.’ We both believe we’ve got the best jobs in the world.”
What about the future? “We don’t need to raise any more money so we’re not going to sell the business just for the sake of it,” says Mernick-Levene.
But, he adds, for a larger company looking for an injection of creativity and higher margins, a deal with Secret Food Tours could make sense on both sides of the table. “If we think there’s a real strategic partnership at a valuation that is fit for the business we’ve created, that could be different.
“There are lots of tourism companies in other sectors, for example, that have much higher revenues than we do but whose bottom line is nothing like as strong.”
Yet any such partner would also need to buy in to the Secret Food Tours ethos as one of the good guys of tourism. “We provide a lot of money to unique areas in a very sustainable way,” concludes Mernick-Levene. “Of the ticket price, 40 per cent goes to the restaurants and 20 per cent goes to the guides.
“We don’t want to lose that. We want to keep the respect of local people by promoting their town in a way that makes visitors love it and want to go back there.”
£20 million
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Meet the beer buddies making millions from insider food tours
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All information within this article is produced by The Times. Please note that the views and information have not been endorsed, issued or approved by Barclays. Any views expressed in this article are not those of Barclays.
Like so many winning ideas before it, the concept of Secret Food Tours was born in the pub.
“Nico and I were both working in Shoreditch and we kept bumping into each other over drinks in our local, the Drunken Monkey,” says Oliver Mernick-Levene, who co-founded the company with Nico Jacquart. “He was a serial tech entrepreneur, I was in marketing and we both wanted a change of lifestyle.”
One of the pair’s better beer-fuelled thoughts was for a “food crawl – a pub crawl but for food”. This guided walk with a difference would blend local culture and history with a tour of gastronomic gems – the kind of special places that definitely aren’t on the tourist trail.
“We thought it was a really cool idea, like when you have friends and family visiting and you show them round your favourite places to eat,” he says.
Great ideas, however, don’t always make for great businesses. To test the concept, Frenchman Jacquart created an itinerary of his favourite foodie spots in Paris, then used his tech skills to knock up a quick and dirty website and buy a few Google AdWords to promote it.
“At the time no one really knew what a food tour was,” says Mernick-Levene. “But even though the website was a bit clunky, when we launched our new product we sold £400 worth of tickets within an hour. That’s when we knew we were on to a winner.”
That was back in 2013. Now the business has a super-slick tech platform (also Jacquart’s brainchild) that manages tours in 70 cities across the globe and allows it to tap into the huge international appetite for experiential tourism.
Over the course of a pleasant afternoon stroll with like-minded people, customers can sample everything from the best pizza and gelato in Naples to superb saké and sashimi in Osaka. Each tour is garnished with a smattering of history and the trademark specially chosen “secret” dish that typifies the locale.
An army of friendly and knowledgeable freelance local guides share selected hotspots with parties of ten or so customers at a time, each of whom pays between £70 and £100 for the privilege. With tips – plus incentives for getting good reviews and collecting email addresses – Mernick-Levene says guides can earn more for a tour than in a six-hour shift in some other sectors, and have fun doing it.
“They are only working for three hours at a time and they are enjoying themselves – lots of them do this in their spare time.”
Secret Food Tours was ranked 22nd in the latest Sunday Times 100 list of the UK’s fastest-growing privately held companies, sponsored by Barclays Private Bank. The venture now anticipates sales getting on for £20 million this year, and has more than 300,000 customers.
What’s more, if all goes to plan, it will be in 100 cities by the end of 2024. “It’s very scalable,” says Mernick-Levene. “We’re the largest food experience company in the world. We expect to grow at 30 cities a year; within larger cities, you can have four or five different tours.”
Clever tech also enables them to pick the most lucrative new cities to add to their portfolio, Jacquart explains. “We look at the number of visitors, the competition, and trends in food and tourism. It all goes into one big algorithm. We have a long list of cities that we want to go to, which are all ranked.”
The system has produced some surprising results but the pair have learned to trust it. “Anyone can pick London, Rome and Barcelona, but when the data was saying Austin, Texas, we were like, ‘What’s in Austin?’” says Mernick-Levene. “In fact, it has turned out to be a great city for us.”