SECRET SAUCE
Full-stack marketplace platform for hospitality × creator collaboration
CLIENT
Secret Sauce
Bangkok → SE Asia
In Production
The easiest way for hospitality brands to turn experiences into content
Secret Sauce is a marketplace connecting local hospitality venues (restaurants, bars, hotels) with micro and nano creators to drive real bookings. Businesses list experiences; creators apply, visit, and post to Instagram and TikTok. No cash changes hands — it’s a barter model. Venues pay a monthly subscription to access the platform.
Launching in Bangkok and expanding across Southeast Asia, the platform targets an underserved market of independent hospitality venues that are priced out of traditional influencer marketing and wasting budgets chasing reach rather than local resonance.
“Coca Cola buys reach. Restaurants buy resonance.”
THE PLATFORM
A four-step marketplace: List → Match → Visit → Post
The product is built around a frictionless barter loop:
Businesses list experiences (meals, stays, tastings)
Local creators browse and apply to campaigns
Visit happens — experience traded, not paid
Content delivered to Instagram and TikTok within 72 hours
Key Platform Features
Campaign creation and management dashboard for venue operators
Creator discovery with profile verification and social stats
In-app direct messaging between venues and creators
Campaign overview with deliverable specs, booking slots, and community guidelines
Creator profiles with portfolio highlights and platform follower counts
Explore feed with geo-filtered campaigns for creators
Break-even Month 7 — $5.25M ARR by Year 3
Built on a $250K seed capital base with 36-month financial model. Assumptions: 50% trial-to-paid conversion, 20% premium tier uptake, monthly churn declining from 2% to 1.5% as the product matures.
Month 7
Break-even point
1,998
Paid users by M36
$5.25M
Year 3 ARR
$4.7M
Cash balance Y3
13
Pricing: $199/mo Base plan, $299/mo Premium plan. Revenue scales through geographic expansion — 1 country at launch, reaching 13 countries by Month 23, driven by 3-country cohort additions every 6 months.
Purpose-built for a mobile-first, multi-market marketplace
Each technology was selected to match Secret Sauce’s specific requirements: high-concurrency API, cross-platform mobile app, and a cloud-native backend with a clear path to multi-region deployment.
Backend API
Python
FastAPI
PostgreSQL
Redis
Alembic
Celery
Mobile App
Dart
Flutter
Firebase
Web Dashboard
TypeScript
Next.js
AWS Infrastructure
ECS Fargate
RDS Postgres
ALB
ECR
S3 + CloudFront
CloudWatch
Serverless containers with an isolated data layer
The infrastructure prioritises two things: zero server management and maximum database security. ECS Fargate handles all container orchestration without patching or AMI management. RDS PostgreSQL lives entirely in private subnets — not accessible from the internet.
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Layer 1 — Public Traffic |
||
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Internet (HTTP:80) |
→ Application Load Balancer |
Public Subnets (10.0.0.0/16) |
|
Layer 2 — Compute (ECS Fargate) |
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|
FastAPI Service (2 tasks) |
Celery Worker (1 task) |
Utility EC2: Redis + Bastion + Cron |
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Layer 3 — Data (Private Subnets) |
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RDS PostgreSQL (db.t3.micro) |
S3 (private) + CloudFront CDN |
Security Groups (DB isolated) |
Architecture Highlights
- VPC with split public/private subnets enforcing strict security boundaries
- FastAPI runs 2 Fargate tasks for high availability and automatic load balancing
- Celery Worker on Fargate handles async background jobs (matching, notifications, billing)
- Redis on Utility EC2 instance used for caching and Celery broker
- ALB distributes public traffic across FastAPI tasks with health check routing
- S3 with public access disabled — all assets served through CloudFront CDN
- Security Groups act as virtual firewalls: DB only accepts connections from app + utility tier
- Auto-scaling scoped for next development phase
Why these choices
FastAPI over Django
The marketplace requires low-latency matching and async I/O for creator applications at volume. FastAPI’s async-native design and automatic OpenAPI documentation made it the right fit for a mobile-first API with a growing endpoint surface.
Flutter for mobile
A single Dart codebase shipping to both iOS and Android was critical for a lean team launching across multiple markets simultaneously. Firebase provides real-time push notifications for campaign activity and creator-venue messaging.
ECS Fargate over EC2
No patching, no AMI management. The team ships new container images via ECR without touching infrastructure. Task-level scaling handles traffic spikes from simultaneous campaign launches across multiple cities.
Celery + Redis for async jobs
Campaign matching, content delivery reminders, and subscription billing events all run asynchronously via Celery workers. This keeps API response times clean for the mobile app regardless of background job volume.
Next.js for the business dashboard
Server-side rendering for SEO-relevant public pages (campaign discovery gallery) and React for the interactive business dashboard. TypeScript throughout for type safety across a shared API contract.
Production-ready platform, live in Bangkok
Complete mobile app (iOS + Android) built with Flutter and Firebase, with campaign discovery, application flow, creator profiles, and in-app messaging
FastAPI backend fully containerised and deployed on ECS Fargate with RDS PostgreSQL isolated in private subnets
Next.js web dashboard for venue operators with campaign creation, creator management, and subscription billing
Utility EC2 instance running Redis, database migration tooling, and scheduled cron jobs
Contact: James York, Founder & CEO — james@secretsauce.app — +66 09 1726 9563
This document is confidential and intended solely for the recipient.
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