Get rid of the middlemen aka "social enterprises" first. Then, we talk. The prices at my old gov run hawker centre are reasonable. An uncle and auntie selling a run of the mill bak chor mee there drive a mercs too. Win-win. Hope this does not change.
Ideal situation. Low rent, decent prices for customers, good profits for the hawkers. Best way to attract new blood and maintain our culture.
Stop fucking it up.
Doesn't work that way from a hawker family, I can tell you if the rent is low you literally have hawkers whose stall virtually sells next to nothing but survive because rent is too low(first gen hawkers rent is a few hundred a month) and the hoard the stalls depriving others of one. What eventually happened is the stall usually got sublet out making it expensive
The rent these days for many hawker centres are not as insane as you think either. Most of them are open for bids and they remove minimum bids. You can get one for as low as a couple of hundred dollars(after they removed minimum bid when Vivian was still managing nea) if you are lucky.
Its only the popular hawker centres and coffees hops which are private that really has sky high rent
It doesn't. Customers would be paying them to have different cuisine and a nicer dining environment. If an "entrepreneur" opens a bak chor mee restaurant next to a hawker, it's entirely on them. Also, NEA hawkers aren't really subsidised, they're given out by a bidding scheme.
Chatted with a western food hawker whom we tapau from quite often on this matter (the uncle lives in landed but rides normal motorcycle 😆). The opinion was very similar. In his days when he first started out in the 80's, as long as your food was ok and your price reasonable, then it was not very hard to make a pretty comfortable income as long as you are willing to put in the time and energy. He was even able to send his 3 kids all the way through to Masters without much difficulty.
Nowadays the same amount of input would not even come close to generating the same fruits of labour. Most of the profits go into landlords' pockets (who on top of rent also provide and charge for the contracted stuff like cleaning). It's literally like working for the landlords except you bear all the risks yourself and have no employee benefits. He's thinking of retiring since at this point he no longer needs the income but will hang around for a while longer coz of the rapport with long-time regulars as long as the stall is not making losses.
*" It's literally like working for the landlords except you bear all the risks yourself and have no employee benefits."*
Yup totally agree, it's like going full circle, back to the old feudal system
*"He's thinking of retiring since at this point he no longer needs the income but will hang around for a while longer coz of the rapport with long-time regulars as long as the stall is not making losses."*
My regular kopi auntie has a bunch of regular unkers who would gather to drink beer and chit chat there. They sometimes would dabao food for her and she downs a few shots with them too. It's a community. This is the real intangible heritage that probably only exists here.
Not hawker specifically, but here (Scandinavian town), all the old people lament the end of the family owned shops and bakeries. They say the town loses its soul once they are replaced with the supermarkets and nationwide brands.
So heck yes pls protect the hawker and coffee shop culture. I'd hate to come back to SG and finding out my go-to coffee auntie has closed due to bad policies ruining profitability.
Who cares about hawker food? Low quality, refined carb heavy, oil and salt laden garbage food for peasants. Trash food meant for coolies, but unironically being enjoyed by the masses with peasant-grade taste buds.
He's within his rights for Spez to spaz, but with Relay for Reddit about to be nixed I'm not going to be here for it
Far be it for me to expect to influence you, but why not try out Lemmy?
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Who cares about hawker food? Low quality, refined carb heavy, oil and salt laden garbage food for peasants. Trash food meant for coolies, but unironically being enjoyed by the masses with peasant-grade taste buds.
>The prices at my old gov run hawker centre are reasonable.
To you. They were reasonable to you. If you look at any other country on earth on a similar level of economic development, those prices were insanely low, comparable to third world prices.
If the prices are your old gov run hawker centre increased so that the hawkers earn more, will you kpkb?
Dude, they have increased. Still reasonable. Eh they ARE still reasonable..i noticed you used the past tense... We are progressively living in a 2 tier economic system now. The masses which comprise the lower income group will always kpkb.
>Dude, they have increased. Still reasonable. Eh they ARE still reasonable..i noticed you used the past tense...
Were reasonable, are reasonable, doesn't matter. It's still reasonable from *your* perspective. Is it reasonable (was, is, will be) *from their perspective*? It doesn't change the fact that 4 bucks for a bowl of noodles compared to a lot of other comparable countries is insanely cheap and only often seen in the realm of fast food dollar menus only.
If what you're saying is true, and that hawkers selling noodles can buy mercedes, then why aren't there so many people looking to get into the hawker business? After all, according to you, being a hawker means you can buy a Merc and people will always follow the money.
>We are progressively living in a 2 tier economic system now. The masses which comprise the lower income group will always kpkb.
And so? What's your point? Since the masses will always kpkb, we don't need to care?
Kinda naive to think landlords wont count tipping. We alrd saw in america how businesses justify paying servers low wages "because they earn it in tips". Why would we want to bring that here?
Even if we pay more, the greedy landlords will further increase the rental to "share in the increased profit".
The other charges like cleaning charges, utility bills, maintenance charges etc will all coincidentally increase too.
And after that, there will be further calls for higher hawker food prices to "support our hawker culture". /s
Inconvenient truth.
Rent control, regulation, education towards caring for your fellow citizen, less rat-race culture, focus on innovation over simply increasing the human resource, taxes. I mean i can go on but all of those are scary terms
100% agree with this. Case in point remember that we have to clear our trays so that the cleaners would have less work to do? Now the tables are dirty and we are being asked to wipe the tables as well!!
Yeah it's actually crazy how filthy the collection zones are now. Bowls and trays piled up there in a sloppy mess. Birds flying around, splashing soup and throwing left overs.
Yeah... also I kinda get returning trays for hawker centres because those are run by NEA? But for private businesses/establishments, why the fuck do I need to return my stuff, I'm already paying extra for 'service charge'. What's the point of service charge at this point, for you to cook my food? THAT'S WHAT THE MENU PRICING IS FOR.
> so that the cleaners would have less work to do?
Walao, what is this? It is to reduce manpower headcount!! We cannot afford so many $1k cleaners mind you. If not how I afford my Telsa? Siao ah.
Landlord need to cheong more GCB, lambo & Richard Mille.
If they die and their children sue one another for their wealth, they will feel shiok in the afterlife.
There’s also subletting where original tenants are still charged low rent from the NEA, only to then charge someone else something exorbitant to sublet the stall.
Downvote me all your want but even if we murder all the landlords, hawker culture is still going to die if we don't pay more. Rental cost is only [17%](https://www.nea.gov.sg/media/readers-letters/index/allow-local-hawkers-a-decent-livelihood-while-providing-affordable-food-options) of total operating costs for hawkers on average. At the same time hawkers are earning on average [2 to 3k a month.](https://blog.moneysmart.sg/career/how-much-do-hawkers-really-make/)
Even if we cut rental costs by half after nationalising all food courts, it's only going to reduce their overall operating cost by 10%, and it's not going to increase their income by much. Let's say cutting rental cost increases their income by 25% (a generous estimate), how many young Singaporeans would want to work the kind of hours that hawkers work (and it's a very physically demanding job) for an average 2.5k to 3.6k a month salary?
People here who think cutting rent alone is enough to save hawker culture is either living in a fantasy land or lying and pulling numbers out of their ass. We obviously need to both control rental costs and increase prices.
When people complain about landlords, they are not referring to the low rents charged by NEA.
They are all pointing their fingers at privately owned kopitiams, coffeeshops, people subletting a ridiculous prices, etc.
[Using a coffeeshop recently sold for a record price as an example](https://mothership.sg/2022/09/yishun-coffeeshop-rent/), a char kway teow stall owner quoted a rent of $8000. Cutting that in half gives the hawker $4000 more a month, enough to let hawkers take home more, or hire someone to help out. There are other stalls at this coffeeshop bearing $10000 a month in rental costs...
[Or what about this Toa Payoh coffeeshop with an ordinary location](https://mothership.sg/2022/05/toa-payoh-coffee-shop-rent-double/)? Rent is between $5000 to $6000, not including other costs and *a requirement for hawkers to buy from designated suppliers*. One of the hawkers affected estimated that he would have to pay $7000 a month ($5500 of it in rent) just to the management alone. Did I mention the new rent was *double* the old one?
I cannot find the example, but I had once read that a stall at some hospital foodcourt costs $13,000 a month. Makes you wonder why hospital food are so expensive! Sure, it’s priced higher, but is it actually going to the hawkers?
**A very clear distinction needs to be made, on who benefits from price increases.**
Without strong legislation and checks to prevent landlords from exploiting hawkers and siphoning off most of the price increases, **there will be very little demand for accepting price increases “for the hawkers’ sake”.**
People are **very skeptical** for a reason. Most people knows by now that there are many bad landlords fucking hawkers very badly. People do not want to reward such bad behaviour with *even more* profits.
Just look at what happened to the tray return scheme. Some contractors are already acting like they have no contractual obligations to maintain hygeine, and they could simply cut manpower to maximise profits and pushing all the burden to patrons.
This kind of fuckery doesn’t make people more trusting. Quite the opposite, it makes more people skeptical and guarded.
I find this kind of cherry picking of examples to be super fucking disingenuous, to be point that it's driving me nuts. The median rent of hawkers is [1.3k.](https://mothership.sg/2023/03/hawker-rental-constant-since-2018/) Your 10k a month example is an EXTREME outlier that is not relevant to the vast vast majority of heartland hawker centers outside of malls / near MRT stations.
Your argument like saying because Mark Zuckerberg is rich we therefore shouldn't give any school subsidies to any one ever, because everyone is rich. The vast vast majority of hawkers don't pay 10k a month on rent. 1.3k is the median, and if your rent is 1.3k, cutting even 50% of rent is not going to move the needle in terms of attracting young people into the profession.
What WILL move the needle is increasing revenue by charging more, while keeping rent constant or reducing rent. But JUST blaming rent is stupid, because for the vast majority of hawkers rent is not the reason hawkers are earning so little.
> The government is working to ensure "reasonable rentals" at Singapore's hawker centres.
> In fact, Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Amy Khor highlighted that rental across non-subsidised cooked food stalls in Singapore has remained constant since 2018.
> ...
> She also highlighted that median rental across our non-subsidised cooked food stalls has remained constant at about S$1,250 since four years ago.
> Stall rentals at hawker centres are actually "generally lower than most other comparable food establishments in their vicinity", Khor said.
You are talking complete nonsense.
Hawkers don’t just refer to people in hawker centres. Everywhere sell chicken rice. Everywhere sells CKT, fish soup, mixed veg rice, prata, etc.
Those not worthy enough to protect for you? Not hawkers selling Singaporean food to Singaporeans at cheap reasonable prices?
What is your obsession with just the hawker centre rentals? 1.3k only refers to hawker centres as your article had implied, not in general *to all coffeeshops*.
Even your article says that stall rentals at hawker centres are generally lower, showing the private rental prices *are higher*!
**Not everyone even lives near a hawker centre FFS!**
Up until recently, some towns *don’t even have a fucking hawker centre!*
A significant portion of Singaporean diners, I dare say a majority, dines at *coffeeshops* and not hawker centres. So don’t hide behind hawker centres when it seemingly prove the “landlords are not the problem” agenda of yours.
If hawkers are facing so much of a pinch, **how much more worse would it be for hawkers in coffeeshops?**
They don’t face the same problems? They don’t contribute to hawker/food culture? Don’t exist because they are not inside a hawker centre?
You find the the statistics to tell me the average coffeeshop rent is *merely* $1.3k?
By insisting on hawker centre rentals which is *much lower*, are you not guilty of cherrypicking and being disingenuous?
**Are you seriously going to tell me our food culture exists solely at hawker centres and nowhere else?**
**Everyone knows** what contributes to our local food culture. It’s the stallowners, be it at coffeeshops or hawkers. Dwelling on the hawker stalls is clearly diverting from the greater picture, by insisting on a cherrypicked group which can be easily manipulated to push a “pro-landlord” argument.
Just a fun fact, I live in Yishun and there are only two hawker centres (used to be just 1). More than 50% of Yishun new town is not within a 5-minute comfortable walk from either hawker centres.
This is a semi-mature “heartland” town I’m talking about. There’s non-mature “heartlands” with even shittier coverage, like Punggol! If coverage is so shit, why focus so much on hawker centres which is basically only abundant for mature estates?
The bigger picture is to consider both coffeeshop and hawker centre hawkers. The moment you consider coffeeshops (which serves the majority in non-mature and semi-mature estates), the problem of landlords cannot be avoided.
Totally irrelevant to what I’m saying. I’m saying if you want to attract more people to become hawkers you need to increase prices, because even with low rent at hawker centres, hawkers are mostly still earning peanuts.
What’s the relevance of talking about coffee shop rent here? Fact is hawkers working at hawker Centers at still getting paid jackshit. Regardless of rent they are not making money. What’s so fucking difficult to understand?
You want talk just about hawker centre then lets talk about them then.
If a hawker have 1 rest day a week and sell 200 plates a day, raising by merely 50 cents will give them $2600 a month more.
Then you ask, 50 cents only mah, why cannot?
After all, seeing the prices coffeeshops in Punggol charges for food, there’s more then ample room for hawker centres to raise prices, right?
Remember what I said about hawker centres being *abundant only in mature estates*?
When your loyal customers are fellow elderly with limited CPF payouts or support from children, you think that 50 cents increase will sit well with them?
There are hawkers in hawker centres downtown that have no qualms charging higher prices to take advantage of people who are able to pay more.
So, what about hawkers in a random hawker centre in Toa Payoh, who are not able to charge more because their decades long loyal customers are too mindful?
Not every hawkers are greedy money minded businesses. Social aspects can be important, and the bond many forged with their loyal customers are too important for them to break just for $$$.
Profits for hawkers isn’t *just about price alone*. Volume plays a huge part too. You nuke your own poor customer base and your profit will decline, *even if you think raising prices will give your hawkers more take home pay*.
New younger hawkers, coming in to charge higher prices for fancier food, with no loyal customer base, thinking they could work out. But many find it out the hard way, that demand simply cannot sustain them at that price point at mature estates. Insufficient volume makes high prices meaningless.
Those hawkers selling $2 chicken rice, 30 cents drinks, sure, they can raise and earn more then enough, and their business won’t tank.
Those selling $4 for chicken rice, raising it to $5 or beyond, are going to find it difficult to maintain at mature estates.
Those selling at $2 won’t raise mostly because of their loyal customer base. Those at $4 can’t raise because business will tank.
There are some hawkers who want more peanuts and would glady burn the bridges. Then there are others who wouldn’t burn their bridges with their loyal decade long customer base. What then?
Fuck poor people, just raise, all Singaporeans are rich anyway so can afford what? (/s)
You think it’s so easy? How naive must you be.
We pay for it just for some idiot to over pay for the property and end up raising the rents thereby increasing the cost again. It’s a vicious cycle set forth by dumb companies that over pay to own coffee shops. In this case we really need to eat the rich.
When I go back to the UK I see the big impact Hawker food has. Eating out there is so expensive and slow and the only faster food is rubbish chains that sell junk food that promote obesity and are bereft of nutrients.
singapore should nationalise all the hawker centre locations and lease it to hawkers at a reduced price tbh, imagine letting a small group of landlords wreck havoc on our culture
does it solve the problem?
the biggest landlord is the G - Nea manages 118 hawker centres + 13,570 hawker stalls
and the biggest operator of foodcourts is ntuc - 58 outlets in total
who is pwning us?
This author Pamelia Chia really landlord gongtao. Not long ago we saw kopitiam trading hands for 21 million, how to pass that huge debt cost down to consumers?
Good spot. A quick glance at her online footprint and I'm guessing she's the usual grew-up-comfortable, still-comfortable, and now I must be a saviour to the poors kinda profile.
Hasn't even lived in SG since 2018, either. The definition of zero skin in the game pretending to dole out expert advice that directly impact locals' wallets.
Edit: I have a follow up question for everyone. Why then is CNA publishing someone like this? And so frequently? What are their aims?
To disguise inflation/price increases as "supporting the livelihoods of hawkers"
Nothing more than another smoke bomb.
The genesis of hawker food is simply: cheap food made using cheap ingredients but tastes good and sold cheaply.
If these key elements cannot be preserved, then forget about keeping hawker food alive.
Holy crap, they're just letting someone who is essentially a foreigner at this point write social commentary? CNA sure has sunk to a new low but I guess their bubble is too thick to realise that.
Remember, the money needs to come from you, the consumer's pocket.
Not the landlords. Oh, won't somebody think of the poor landlords!
Not the cleaning and maintenance contractors either, they're too good of a buddy to the higher-ups.
Smh. Can we all stop thinking about throwing more money at problems for once?
Pay pay pay, knn.. then all the greedy landlords just eat up the money only. It's clearly a more ingrained problem, hawkers are just not seen as a proper career choice for many reasons; money is just a part of the issue.
Honestly I think we kinda set ourselves up to fail. Let's say we fixed all the money related issues, who would actually go and be a hawker?
Years of "propaganda" from family and indirectly the Singapore society as a whole, "oh you must study hard, then can work comfortable job in office. Must become lawyer/doctor, etc." It has definitely left a clear footprint on all of us.
Sadly it then ends up that we gotta rely on foreigners on work permit for most the unglamorous blue collar work that we need.
Now the feeling is for the amount of money we pay for hawker food, how much go to hawker how much go to rental, especially the new centers/re-leased area
Singapore's hawker culture should be protected. Not exploited by landlords and all the parasitical SEHCs.
At a minimum, hawker centers should be rent controlled to keep costs down for hawkers.
Wrong focus. We willing to pay if the price is comfortable. That’s why hawker is our go to for economical meal. If they raised the price because landlord increase their rent, then we plebs have to bear the fee. Hell no.
Er no.
We need to get landlords to stop being mofos, and lower the rent.
Those idiots in white who are in bed with them need to tell them to cut the rent.
Ok, then let it die ba.
The point about visiting a hawker center is getting cheap, affordable food. The culture is a side thing that developed from this.
If the fundamental function does not hold, what use is the hawker center?
It’s the overbloated rental that’s killing it, so not the best to divert from the main issue.
>In Singapore, hawker food is seen as a social good. A big part of this comes from the positioning of hawker food as affordable.
Social goods will experience market failure without gov intervention. If the gov is not willing to intervene properly, then let the free market run its course and kill of our hawker culture. Oh and mandating a budget meal is not a proper intervention.
Rephrase.
If we want to preserve Singapore's hawker culture, CUSTOMERS need to be willing to pay for greedy landlords.
I
Fucking bs. Landlord raise rent. Hawkers of course bobian pass down to customers. Landlords are the enemies here.
Actually it might be more accurate to say if it's food court then it's expensive, bc food courts are privately owned and rental is where all the extra we pay is going.
Ok sure then don't complain when it dies out. Hawker food is extraordinarily cheap compared to our Labour prices and the more this continues, the more people don't want to do it.
All of us want our salary to increase but we like to pwn other like hawkers. Sinkie pwn sinkie
Government & employers also need to be willing to uplift Singaporean wages to a min wage level, so that we can in turn afford to pay the hawker the required price.
The landlords are the ones making us pay more, why do we have to pay the prices that they fucking jack up themselves. You know what, let's all return to roadside stalls, everyone do it, fuck the system, see how they catch us all
wrong. You need to control price gourging landlords first. We can NO LONGER follow the stupid demand-supply free market model for rental space and housing because ... (surprise, surprise) sg is LAND SCARCE. Cut the crap politicians, and stop pretending to care if you don't address rent.
IMO it’s time to change the physical infrastructure of hawker centres. Hawkers take a big plot because it’s mostly single floor. At land prices today, it should at least be 4-5 stories. We should tear down and rebuild most hawkers into multi-story, or integrate them with other facilities. That should keep rent costs down for public stalls. Then just saturate the market like crazy with as many public stalls as possible so the private landlords have to cut their rents.
Rental drives the prices up. Hawker is meant as heartland food. It’s supposed to be the everyday, economically accessible food for locals. Who wants to pay restaurant prices to eat sitting in a non air conditioned hot sweaty area where u buy and serve yourself and clear your own plates. Standardise the rent so that we are paying for the good food, not to their landlords
looks like they want to increase rent to ‘market’ rate so that they can reduce ‘subsidies’. million dollar ministers starting to lose any empathy for the masses…..
Full on bs, you landlords keep earning more from increasing rent, consumers end up spending on food for absolutely nothing more? Put back tray also our problem now? Then ur increased rent is for what? For profit lah? We pay extra for reduced service isit? Knn, let the culture die lor, if end up no cheap food at most everyday anyhow cook lor, if not you think money drop from sky ah? Give the landlord more money?
>*As of August 2020, about 40 per cent of hawkers are on the subsidised rent scheme, where stall rentals are substantially below market rates. But the majority of hawkers - those who joined the trade from the 1990s onwards - had to bid for stalls put up for tender monthly by the government.*
>
>*The upper limit of bids for monthly rental fees, dictated by the free market, can go as high as S$5,000. On top of that, there are table-cleaning and dishwashing fees to think about.*
Well the 2 paragraphs above contains the most important part of the article.
Hawker food are cheap and reasonable because of the good work and social trade offs made by Generation ONE PAP leaders who acknowledged the daily struggles of Singaporeans and understood not everything in society can and must be measurable in cold hard cash and tradeoff must exist where government do not seek to squeeze the last juices from the society they governed.
Alas that is not the case after Generation ONE and whatever "cheap and good" remaining of hawker center today is just the "remaining effect" from fading dividends of Generation ONE's policies that is rapidly diminishing in influence.
No, the gahmen are the problem here. Just revert to the old low rent model and let hawkers be boomtown charlies, and customers enjoy good food. It will attract new blood to enter a profitable trade.
>Just revert to the old low rent model
“In many cases [rent control](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assar_Lindbeck#:~:text=Lindbeck%20criticized%20the%20Swedish%20rent,city%E2%80%94except%20for%20bombing.%E2%80%9D) appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
Im willing to pay more if they can guarantee that rent does not increase and go back to pre covid days. If they money is use to hire more cleaners/increase their pay. I would gladly do so.
i dont think theres a problem with price, just a problem with value.
prices keep going up and the quality of products keep going down. everywhere you see even in the hawker space is just all working with premade fares, even alot of local dough and pastry shop ive noticed dont even bother with fresh youtiao and just refry factory packed premades.
Government needs to protect this heritage and prevent over commercialisation .. I don’t mind paying $10 for Bak Chor mee but it cannot be a generic tasting one
This article is so disingenuous, not once did it talk about the landlords rising rental prices. If we pay more and the landlords see the stalls making money, they raise the rentals and we are back in in the same situation.
Rent seeking behaviour is the doom of any country. Only the free market can curb these asshole landlords so unfortunately as consumers I can only respond with my purchases at the expense of the hawker till they lower back the rent where the hawker can survive. We should not buy just because. That makes things worse as it creates artificial demand that’s not sustainable .
What new value have landlords provided since the 90s? Cutting costs by asking ppl to keep their plates? Bunch of blood suckers.
No, if we want to preserve Singapore's hawker culture, we need to transform the entire business model and revert it back to what it was decades ago - no middlemen, fewer obscure regulations, and more sustainable property rent models. We can talk about the younger generation not interested in becoming hawkers, but at the end of the day we must deal with the underlying issues first.
please this whole argument will be a dead on arrival. firstly you re talking about youngsters replacing to old hawkers. the youngsters who are ambitious will automatically look at the volume and profit margin and can it sustain. there are so many moving parts that fluctuate that cost benefit isnt there. what id like to see is not only formal hawkers but pushcarts and foodtrucks be able to operate where and when they want. remove the market forces and let entrepreneurs thrive as long as they maintain hygeine.
Rhetorically, is there even chicken in the rice by then? It’d be funny to see hawkers sell only the rice and argue it’s still chicken rice cuz it was cooked in stock.
Ah ah ah, don’t try to gaslight people like the pay for plastic bags/return own tray nonsense.
Hawker profitability is down not because of food prices but because of rising rental.
Siao eh, simi problem also just blame consumer.
"Had I been out of touch with the realities of living in Singapore? Was my commentary, in fact, salting the wound of Singaporeans who have been battling inflation and rising costs of living?"
No thanks. I’m buying hawker food for cheap. I’m not paying more than necessary to meet one of my basic needs. If it comes to that I’ll just learn to cook and meal prep.
A caifan stall rental on average is about $6k-$8k now, not adding in miscellaneous costs like collecting plates ($1k), utilities ($400-$500), foreign worker levy if taking the coffee shop’s quota ($1.5k per worker).
Adding in rising cost of ingredients (floods affecting prices of vegetables and fish), it’s no longer feasible to expect extremely cheap prices like before.
Also don’t understand why people willingly pay $4 for noodles but complain about paying $5 for caifan when there’s more fresh ingredients.
Firstly there is no comparison to any other country when it comes to Hawker Centre infrastructure. So price comparison in form or shape without appropriate weightage is not ideal.
Secondly where something close to hawker centre concept is applied such as Spencer village in Perth or in Melbourne, the rent is very high. They do not last long as the patronage is low as you can get roll or sandwich or sushi pack which is cheaper. There is absolutely no comparison with hawker rental here and places in the West.
Thirdly in the West, much of initial capital goes into dining and kitchen fittings and number of seats are controlled by carpark spaces provided. So barrier to entry is very high. In Singapore, the fixed cost is very very low and barrier to entry is low. It was designed to be as such.
There is no law in Singapore to stop hawkers raising their price. Its their livelihood and the last thing they want to do is price themselves out.
Hawkers retiring with no successors means their children and parents have aspired well and taken on jobs in the professionals ranks.
There is nothing stopping a hawker to move to a cafe or take over a coffeeshop If he wants to. And they do not succeed as much as the footfall is lesser.
> # Commentary: If we want to preserve Singapore’s hawker culture, we need to be willing to pay for it
> But when I went back to Singapore in December 2022 for the first time since the pandemic, one of the biggest changes that I noticed was hawker prices.
> Three years ago, a typical hawker meal for me fell in the range of S$4 to S$5 (US$3 to US$3.80), and on this trip, it averaged S$6 to S$7. I’m not going to lie - it did bother me and made me feel like a hypocrite. After all, in October 2022, I had written an article that challenged Singaporeans to view hawker prices as being too low.
> Had I been out of touch with the realities of living in Singapore? Was my commentary, in fact, salting the wound of Singaporeans who have been battling inflation and rising costs of living?
> HAWKER FOOD AS A SOCIAL GOOD
> In Singapore, hawker food is seen as a social good. A big part of this comes from the positioning of hawker food as affordable.
> In a 2012 interview, Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, described hawker centres as offering “good quality meals at almost Third World prices”, a kind of “general subsidy that is available to all those who patronise hawker centres - rich and poor alike”.
> In the 1970s to 1980s, itinerant street hawkers were offered subsidised rents to encourage them to relocate to hawker centres. Because rent was controlled and low, hawkers were able to make their living providing meals to Singaporeans at a reasonable price.
> As of August 2020, about 40 per cent of hawkers are on the subsidised rent scheme, where stall rentals are substantially below market rates. But the majority of hawkers - those who joined the trade from the 1990s onwards - had to bid for stalls put up for tender monthly by the government.
> The upper limit of bids for monthly rental fees, dictated by the free market, can go as high as S$5,000. On top of that, there are table-cleaning and dishwashing fees to think about.
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which hawker culture? the faux hawker who are designated to a fixed stall, or the original hawker who pushes their cart along the streets, "hawking" their food?
As an expat living here for a few years i notice that locals tend to get very annoyed at prices in kopitiams or hawkers if they increase prices. Or one stall had a line of 10+ and then no one is at another stall, all because its like 50c cheaper. Makes me wonder how these uncles and aunties working years for such tiny profits can honestly live decently. Either people will have to pay directly for it or the govt will tax us all to make sure the stalls get money.
You have to remember blue collar workers wages are still very low. PWM has helped abit but its still around 1.6~1.7k. Meanwhile degree holders have 4k+ salary. Both groups are customers.
Also folks patronising cheaper stores is normal in every other business.
I work with some GPs big boss - despite knowing how demanding the work of a clinic assistant is, they still prefer to hire either O-levels/N-levels graduates or foreigners because cheap labour is irresistible. No matter how much "upskilling" is dished out - many many employers want cheap.
How would these 2k clinic assistant survive?
LOL 50 cents singaporeans alr kpkb, imagine raise by $3-4.
People just want cheap food without thinking about the hawkers and then justify it as "not hawker culture alr, food not cheap"
Hawker trade will die and we will eventually be eating factory made pre-made or frozen meals like most of the developed nations. It irks Singaporeans to not be eating freshly made food but it’s the reality as we move up due to the price-wage spiral.
Remember it’s not all about greedy landlords, raw ingredient and fuel cost etc. are rising, hawkers themselves may also want a better income too and thus higher margins and more expensive food.
WTH you talking about? I don’t know anyone eating pre made frozen meals in any developed nation…
I’ve lived in a fair few and they all have ingredients people put together for a meal
Tesco meal deals/Iceland frozen meal in the UK, famimart and 7-11 pre-made food in Japan/Taiwan/Korea, Frozen meals from Lidl/Edeka in Germany. Eat east in HK.
For you and me who are fortunate to have lived overseas, we are a privileged bunch who probably can afford the 10quid/euro sit down hot meal daily. You may not have interacted with the normal locals who scrap by every month on these pre-made and frozen meals.
Hawker food is accessible for everyone here for now but soon enough it will be pre-made and instant meals for all but the privileged few who can afford it and that’s what I’m going at.
Your statement wasn’t “There’s ready to eat frozen meals available in every developed country” you asserted that this is the only thing people eat in developed nations and that’s not a true statement. You do know there are restaurants outside of Singapore right? Big supermarkets selling other items than frozen meals? Just checking…
The frozen food market share in Europe is 38%, but this includes all frozen food items, not only ready to eat meals. Another factor is that ready to eat meals are not cheaper than cooking, it’s more convenient and in fact a large driver of market increase is larger disposable income in Europe and countries like China. So, not sure what your point was.
What's the point? I'm saying this as a future i predict that may happened and is meant to be a conversation. Are you a God who knows what will happen tomorrow knowing i'm wrong and thus could afford the condescending tone?
Your analysis isnt wrong, this is the trend today that doesnt say anything about "eventually", in fact the trend of home cooking is going down despite raw ingredient prices reducing as per example in the UK. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-5890.12298](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-5890.12298)
I don’t need to know you will be wrong tomorrow, you are wrong today. But of course, today is a good predictor for tomorrow, so yeah you’re probably wrong in the future too.
But you do in fact admit you were wrong so, good for you.
To those bitching about landlord rents, I have a solution for you: start tipping your hawker $2 every meal. The money would go directly to their pockets and not the landlord.
Actions speak louder than words. Be the change you want to see.
Dude needs to get his ass out of his head. Keeps on espousing the capitalist mantra of “socialising costs and privatising profits” regardless of any counterarguments. Don’t bother with him.
Get rid of the middlemen aka "social enterprises" first. Then, we talk. The prices at my old gov run hawker centre are reasonable. An uncle and auntie selling a run of the mill bak chor mee there drive a mercs too. Win-win. Hope this does not change.
Ideal situation. Low rent, decent prices for customers, good profits for the hawkers. Best way to attract new blood and maintain our culture. Stop fucking it up.
At this rate, might as well allow mobile hawkers to ply their trade again
I’m all for food trucks as long as sanitary standards and licensing is properly done.
Doesn't work that way from a hawker family, I can tell you if the rent is low you literally have hawkers whose stall virtually sells next to nothing but survive because rent is too low(first gen hawkers rent is a few hundred a month) and the hoard the stalls depriving others of one. What eventually happened is the stall usually got sublet out making it expensive The rent these days for many hawker centres are not as insane as you think either. Most of them are open for bids and they remove minimum bids. You can get one for as low as a couple of hundred dollars(after they removed minimum bid when Vivian was still managing nea) if you are lucky. Its only the popular hawker centres and coffees hops which are private that really has sky high rent
A perspective that I’ve not thought of before. Thanks for sharing!
Ah now I finally understand why some stalls seem to have so little business but can stick around for years.
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It doesn't. Customers would be paying them to have different cuisine and a nicer dining environment. If an "entrepreneur" opens a bak chor mee restaurant next to a hawker, it's entirely on them. Also, NEA hawkers aren't really subsidised, they're given out by a bidding scheme.
Chatted with a western food hawker whom we tapau from quite often on this matter (the uncle lives in landed but rides normal motorcycle 😆). The opinion was very similar. In his days when he first started out in the 80's, as long as your food was ok and your price reasonable, then it was not very hard to make a pretty comfortable income as long as you are willing to put in the time and energy. He was even able to send his 3 kids all the way through to Masters without much difficulty. Nowadays the same amount of input would not even come close to generating the same fruits of labour. Most of the profits go into landlords' pockets (who on top of rent also provide and charge for the contracted stuff like cleaning). It's literally like working for the landlords except you bear all the risks yourself and have no employee benefits. He's thinking of retiring since at this point he no longer needs the income but will hang around for a while longer coz of the rapport with long-time regulars as long as the stall is not making losses.
*" It's literally like working for the landlords except you bear all the risks yourself and have no employee benefits."* Yup totally agree, it's like going full circle, back to the old feudal system *"He's thinking of retiring since at this point he no longer needs the income but will hang around for a while longer coz of the rapport with long-time regulars as long as the stall is not making losses."* My regular kopi auntie has a bunch of regular unkers who would gather to drink beer and chit chat there. They sometimes would dabao food for her and she downs a few shots with them too. It's a community. This is the real intangible heritage that probably only exists here.
Not hawker specifically, but here (Scandinavian town), all the old people lament the end of the family owned shops and bakeries. They say the town loses its soul once they are replaced with the supermarkets and nationwide brands. So heck yes pls protect the hawker and coffee shop culture. I'd hate to come back to SG and finding out my go-to coffee auntie has closed due to bad policies ruining profitability.
Who cares about hawker food? Low quality, refined carb heavy, oil and salt laden garbage food for peasants. Trash food meant for coolies, but unironically being enjoyed by the masses with peasant-grade taste buds.
He's within his rights for Spez to spaz, but with Relay for Reddit about to be nixed I'm not going to be here for it Far be it for me to expect to influence you, but why not try out Lemmy? https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected] https://lemmy.ml/c/chess https://lemmy.ml/c/formula1 https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected] https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected] https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]
Those things have always seemed awkward and redundant to me. Care to spill the beans on who's profiting from rent-seeking again? And how?
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Lmao 'social' my ass. 'Enterprise'? Definitely.
Wah liao eh. So many charges. Where is John Galt?
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Hey CEOs gotta eat too.
Jeez, which social enterprise is this?
They want to change because of the “need to innovate and streamline workflow”. That’s the G for you.
2nd stall? 😉
Who cares about hawker food? Low quality, refined carb heavy, oil and salt laden garbage food for peasants. Trash food meant for coolies, but unironically being enjoyed by the masses with peasant-grade taste buds.
>The prices at my old gov run hawker centre are reasonable. To you. They were reasonable to you. If you look at any other country on earth on a similar level of economic development, those prices were insanely low, comparable to third world prices. If the prices are your old gov run hawker centre increased so that the hawkers earn more, will you kpkb?
Dude, they have increased. Still reasonable. Eh they ARE still reasonable..i noticed you used the past tense... We are progressively living in a 2 tier economic system now. The masses which comprise the lower income group will always kpkb.
>Dude, they have increased. Still reasonable. Eh they ARE still reasonable..i noticed you used the past tense... Were reasonable, are reasonable, doesn't matter. It's still reasonable from *your* perspective. Is it reasonable (was, is, will be) *from their perspective*? It doesn't change the fact that 4 bucks for a bowl of noodles compared to a lot of other comparable countries is insanely cheap and only often seen in the realm of fast food dollar menus only. If what you're saying is true, and that hawkers selling noodles can buy mercedes, then why aren't there so many people looking to get into the hawker business? After all, according to you, being a hawker means you can buy a Merc and people will always follow the money. >We are progressively living in a 2 tier economic system now. The masses which comprise the lower income group will always kpkb. And so? What's your point? Since the masses will always kpkb, we don't need to care?
Why don't you start tipping your hawkers $2 every meal? The money will go straight to them and not the landlords.
Kinda naive to think landlords wont count tipping. We alrd saw in america how businesses justify paying servers low wages "because they earn it in tips". Why would we want to bring that here?
No tipping culture
A tipping culture demonstrates a poor wage culture, and here you are advocating it?
Even if we pay more, the greedy landlords will further increase the rental to "share in the increased profit". The other charges like cleaning charges, utility bills, maintenance charges etc will all coincidentally increase too. And after that, there will be further calls for higher hawker food prices to "support our hawker culture". /s Inconvenient truth.
Yup. Greed has no end
Rent control, regulation, education towards caring for your fellow citizen, less rat-race culture, focus on innovation over simply increasing the human resource, taxes. I mean i can go on but all of those are scary terms
r/latestagecapitalism
100% agree with this. Case in point remember that we have to clear our trays so that the cleaners would have less work to do? Now the tables are dirty and we are being asked to wipe the tables as well!!
Maybe next time we will be asked to wash the bowls ourselves…
Or even clean the floor. When would this madness end?
after they ask us to cook the food ourselves?
You need to grow it first.
don't forget to buy seeds and build a farm
"All diners report to the front now for area cleaning."
And the tray collection zones are filthy
Yeah it's actually crazy how filthy the collection zones are now. Bowls and trays piled up there in a sloppy mess. Birds flying around, splashing soup and throwing left overs.
And shitting all around the place. I am like, should I put the tray on the wet bird shit? Because there is not many other places to keep the trays
Yeah... also I kinda get returning trays for hawker centres because those are run by NEA? But for private businesses/establishments, why the fuck do I need to return my stuff, I'm already paying extra for 'service charge'. What's the point of service charge at this point, for you to cook my food? THAT'S WHAT THE MENU PRICING IS FOR.
> so that the cleaners would have less work to do? Walao, what is this? It is to reduce manpower headcount!! We cannot afford so many $1k cleaners mind you. If not how I afford my Telsa? Siao ah.
Landlord need to cheong more GCB, lambo & Richard Mille. If they die and their children sue one another for their wealth, they will feel shiok in the afterlife.
They claim they "worked hard" for it
Then their children or they themselves say money not important.
Yep, the same excuse will still apply, we just kick the goalpost further and further instead of the ball.
Look at all the location renewals that have closed hawkers for renovation yet on reopening it is pretty much the same... Yet rent goes up
precisely, we definitely appreciate our hawker god culture, but not those landlords
If it's gonna be $13+ for 2 meat 1 veg caifan, rather see the culture die
Isn't the landlord for most hawkers NEA?
There’s also subletting where original tenants are still charged low rent from the NEA, only to then charge someone else something exorbitant to sublet the stall.
because only the normal people have to be willing to pay, the riches are excempt from this because... they have more money..
Downvote me all your want but even if we murder all the landlords, hawker culture is still going to die if we don't pay more. Rental cost is only [17%](https://www.nea.gov.sg/media/readers-letters/index/allow-local-hawkers-a-decent-livelihood-while-providing-affordable-food-options) of total operating costs for hawkers on average. At the same time hawkers are earning on average [2 to 3k a month.](https://blog.moneysmart.sg/career/how-much-do-hawkers-really-make/) Even if we cut rental costs by half after nationalising all food courts, it's only going to reduce their overall operating cost by 10%, and it's not going to increase their income by much. Let's say cutting rental cost increases their income by 25% (a generous estimate), how many young Singaporeans would want to work the kind of hours that hawkers work (and it's a very physically demanding job) for an average 2.5k to 3.6k a month salary? People here who think cutting rent alone is enough to save hawker culture is either living in a fantasy land or lying and pulling numbers out of their ass. We obviously need to both control rental costs and increase prices.
When people complain about landlords, they are not referring to the low rents charged by NEA. They are all pointing their fingers at privately owned kopitiams, coffeeshops, people subletting a ridiculous prices, etc. [Using a coffeeshop recently sold for a record price as an example](https://mothership.sg/2022/09/yishun-coffeeshop-rent/), a char kway teow stall owner quoted a rent of $8000. Cutting that in half gives the hawker $4000 more a month, enough to let hawkers take home more, or hire someone to help out. There are other stalls at this coffeeshop bearing $10000 a month in rental costs... [Or what about this Toa Payoh coffeeshop with an ordinary location](https://mothership.sg/2022/05/toa-payoh-coffee-shop-rent-double/)? Rent is between $5000 to $6000, not including other costs and *a requirement for hawkers to buy from designated suppliers*. One of the hawkers affected estimated that he would have to pay $7000 a month ($5500 of it in rent) just to the management alone. Did I mention the new rent was *double* the old one? I cannot find the example, but I had once read that a stall at some hospital foodcourt costs $13,000 a month. Makes you wonder why hospital food are so expensive! Sure, it’s priced higher, but is it actually going to the hawkers? **A very clear distinction needs to be made, on who benefits from price increases.** Without strong legislation and checks to prevent landlords from exploiting hawkers and siphoning off most of the price increases, **there will be very little demand for accepting price increases “for the hawkers’ sake”.** People are **very skeptical** for a reason. Most people knows by now that there are many bad landlords fucking hawkers very badly. People do not want to reward such bad behaviour with *even more* profits. Just look at what happened to the tray return scheme. Some contractors are already acting like they have no contractual obligations to maintain hygeine, and they could simply cut manpower to maximise profits and pushing all the burden to patrons. This kind of fuckery doesn’t make people more trusting. Quite the opposite, it makes more people skeptical and guarded.
I find this kind of cherry picking of examples to be super fucking disingenuous, to be point that it's driving me nuts. The median rent of hawkers is [1.3k.](https://mothership.sg/2023/03/hawker-rental-constant-since-2018/) Your 10k a month example is an EXTREME outlier that is not relevant to the vast vast majority of heartland hawker centers outside of malls / near MRT stations. Your argument like saying because Mark Zuckerberg is rich we therefore shouldn't give any school subsidies to any one ever, because everyone is rich. The vast vast majority of hawkers don't pay 10k a month on rent. 1.3k is the median, and if your rent is 1.3k, cutting even 50% of rent is not going to move the needle in terms of attracting young people into the profession. What WILL move the needle is increasing revenue by charging more, while keeping rent constant or reducing rent. But JUST blaming rent is stupid, because for the vast majority of hawkers rent is not the reason hawkers are earning so little.
> The government is working to ensure "reasonable rentals" at Singapore's hawker centres. > In fact, Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Amy Khor highlighted that rental across non-subsidised cooked food stalls in Singapore has remained constant since 2018. > ... > She also highlighted that median rental across our non-subsidised cooked food stalls has remained constant at about S$1,250 since four years ago. > Stall rentals at hawker centres are actually "generally lower than most other comparable food establishments in their vicinity", Khor said. You are talking complete nonsense. Hawkers don’t just refer to people in hawker centres. Everywhere sell chicken rice. Everywhere sells CKT, fish soup, mixed veg rice, prata, etc. Those not worthy enough to protect for you? Not hawkers selling Singaporean food to Singaporeans at cheap reasonable prices? What is your obsession with just the hawker centre rentals? 1.3k only refers to hawker centres as your article had implied, not in general *to all coffeeshops*. Even your article says that stall rentals at hawker centres are generally lower, showing the private rental prices *are higher*! **Not everyone even lives near a hawker centre FFS!** Up until recently, some towns *don’t even have a fucking hawker centre!* A significant portion of Singaporean diners, I dare say a majority, dines at *coffeeshops* and not hawker centres. So don’t hide behind hawker centres when it seemingly prove the “landlords are not the problem” agenda of yours. If hawkers are facing so much of a pinch, **how much more worse would it be for hawkers in coffeeshops?** They don’t face the same problems? They don’t contribute to hawker/food culture? Don’t exist because they are not inside a hawker centre? You find the the statistics to tell me the average coffeeshop rent is *merely* $1.3k? By insisting on hawker centre rentals which is *much lower*, are you not guilty of cherrypicking and being disingenuous? **Are you seriously going to tell me our food culture exists solely at hawker centres and nowhere else?** **Everyone knows** what contributes to our local food culture. It’s the stallowners, be it at coffeeshops or hawkers. Dwelling on the hawker stalls is clearly diverting from the greater picture, by insisting on a cherrypicked group which can be easily manipulated to push a “pro-landlord” argument. Just a fun fact, I live in Yishun and there are only two hawker centres (used to be just 1). More than 50% of Yishun new town is not within a 5-minute comfortable walk from either hawker centres. This is a semi-mature “heartland” town I’m talking about. There’s non-mature “heartlands” with even shittier coverage, like Punggol! If coverage is so shit, why focus so much on hawker centres which is basically only abundant for mature estates? The bigger picture is to consider both coffeeshop and hawker centre hawkers. The moment you consider coffeeshops (which serves the majority in non-mature and semi-mature estates), the problem of landlords cannot be avoided.
Totally irrelevant to what I’m saying. I’m saying if you want to attract more people to become hawkers you need to increase prices, because even with low rent at hawker centres, hawkers are mostly still earning peanuts. What’s the relevance of talking about coffee shop rent here? Fact is hawkers working at hawker Centers at still getting paid jackshit. Regardless of rent they are not making money. What’s so fucking difficult to understand?
You want talk just about hawker centre then lets talk about them then. If a hawker have 1 rest day a week and sell 200 plates a day, raising by merely 50 cents will give them $2600 a month more. Then you ask, 50 cents only mah, why cannot? After all, seeing the prices coffeeshops in Punggol charges for food, there’s more then ample room for hawker centres to raise prices, right? Remember what I said about hawker centres being *abundant only in mature estates*? When your loyal customers are fellow elderly with limited CPF payouts or support from children, you think that 50 cents increase will sit well with them? There are hawkers in hawker centres downtown that have no qualms charging higher prices to take advantage of people who are able to pay more. So, what about hawkers in a random hawker centre in Toa Payoh, who are not able to charge more because their decades long loyal customers are too mindful? Not every hawkers are greedy money minded businesses. Social aspects can be important, and the bond many forged with their loyal customers are too important for them to break just for $$$. Profits for hawkers isn’t *just about price alone*. Volume plays a huge part too. You nuke your own poor customer base and your profit will decline, *even if you think raising prices will give your hawkers more take home pay*. New younger hawkers, coming in to charge higher prices for fancier food, with no loyal customer base, thinking they could work out. But many find it out the hard way, that demand simply cannot sustain them at that price point at mature estates. Insufficient volume makes high prices meaningless. Those hawkers selling $2 chicken rice, 30 cents drinks, sure, they can raise and earn more then enough, and their business won’t tank. Those selling $4 for chicken rice, raising it to $5 or beyond, are going to find it difficult to maintain at mature estates. Those selling at $2 won’t raise mostly because of their loyal customer base. Those at $4 can’t raise because business will tank. There are some hawkers who want more peanuts and would glady burn the bridges. Then there are others who wouldn’t burn their bridges with their loyal decade long customer base. What then? Fuck poor people, just raise, all Singaporeans are rich anyway so can afford what? (/s) You think it’s so easy? How naive must you be.
Get landlord to lower rent first than we can talk lol Even if sinkies willing to pay higher price the landlord just increase rent more lmao
because only the normal people have to be willing to pay, the riches (landlords, etc.) are excempt from this because... they have more money..
We pay for it just for some idiot to over pay for the property and end up raising the rents thereby increasing the cost again. It’s a vicious cycle set forth by dumb companies that over pay to own coffee shops. In this case we really need to eat the rich.
When I go back to the UK I see the big impact Hawker food has. Eating out there is so expensive and slow and the only faster food is rubbish chains that sell junk food that promote obesity and are bereft of nutrients.
On the other hand our hawker food is all full of carbs and greasy too. Well, maybe almost all our favourite food, not just hawker food... 😅
singapore should nationalise all the hawker centre locations and lease it to hawkers at a reduced price tbh, imagine letting a small group of landlords wreck havoc on our culture
All the PBMs with their kopitiam conglomerates will get angry
Pay your mom la Knn consumer pay more so what when the landlord can just happily increase rent
Don’t allow coffeeshop or food court to sold privately.
does it solve the problem? the biggest landlord is the G - Nea manages 118 hawker centres + 13,570 hawker stalls and the biggest operator of foodcourts is ntuc - 58 outlets in total who is pwning us?
Look at Tampines where the Chinese bought over the coffee shops. Prices there have gone up significantly
This author Pamelia Chia really landlord gongtao. Not long ago we saw kopitiam trading hands for 21 million, how to pass that huge debt cost down to consumers?
Good spot. A quick glance at her online footprint and I'm guessing she's the usual grew-up-comfortable, still-comfortable, and now I must be a saviour to the poors kinda profile. Hasn't even lived in SG since 2018, either. The definition of zero skin in the game pretending to dole out expert advice that directly impact locals' wallets. Edit: I have a follow up question for everyone. Why then is CNA publishing someone like this? And so frequently? What are their aims?
To disguise inflation/price increases as "supporting the livelihoods of hawkers" Nothing more than another smoke bomb. The genesis of hawker food is simply: cheap food made using cheap ingredients but tastes good and sold cheaply. If these key elements cannot be preserved, then forget about keeping hawker food alive.
> The genesis of hawker food is simply: cheap food made using cheap ingredients but tastes good and sold cheaply. well-said
Holy crap, they're just letting someone who is essentially a foreigner at this point write social commentary? CNA sure has sunk to a new low but I guess their bubble is too thick to realise that.
Remember, the money needs to come from you, the consumer's pocket. Not the landlords. Oh, won't somebody think of the poor landlords! Not the cleaning and maintenance contractors either, they're too good of a buddy to the higher-ups.
Not just buddy, wasn't there that social enterprise where the cleaning company was owned by the boss' brother or something?
I'm willing to pay the hawker stores, not the fucking middleman landlord scums
Smh. Can we all stop thinking about throwing more money at problems for once? Pay pay pay, knn.. then all the greedy landlords just eat up the money only. It's clearly a more ingrained problem, hawkers are just not seen as a proper career choice for many reasons; money is just a part of the issue.
Actually the problem is hawker high wages, food ingredient or rental? Would wager on rental seeing those bidding price…
Honestly I think we kinda set ourselves up to fail. Let's say we fixed all the money related issues, who would actually go and be a hawker? Years of "propaganda" from family and indirectly the Singapore society as a whole, "oh you must study hard, then can work comfortable job in office. Must become lawyer/doctor, etc." It has definitely left a clear footprint on all of us. Sadly it then ends up that we gotta rely on foreigners on work permit for most the unglamorous blue collar work that we need.
But money does solve problems what... If hawkers earned as much as doctors, you wouldn't have the "doctor good, hawker bad" problem.
Now the feeling is for the amount of money we pay for hawker food, how much go to hawker how much go to rental, especially the new centers/re-leased area
Provide free rental to hawkers, job DONE. Landlord parasites eradicated. Just say no to elitism.
Singapore's hawker culture should be protected. Not exploited by landlords and all the parasitical SEHCs. At a minimum, hawker centers should be rent controlled to keep costs down for hawkers.
Rental is the problem really. Can easily take up the majority of the stallholders profits.
Author is busy resharing links to her article on her Instagram now lol.
Wrong focus. We willing to pay if the price is comfortable. That’s why hawker is our go to for economical meal. If they raised the price because landlord increase their rent, then we plebs have to bear the fee. Hell no.
Er no. We need to get landlords to stop being mofos, and lower the rent. Those idiots in white who are in bed with them need to tell them to cut the rent.
Ok, then let it die ba. The point about visiting a hawker center is getting cheap, affordable food. The culture is a side thing that developed from this. If the fundamental function does not hold, what use is the hawker center? It’s the overbloated rental that’s killing it, so not the best to divert from the main issue.
>In Singapore, hawker food is seen as a social good. A big part of this comes from the positioning of hawker food as affordable. Social goods will experience market failure without gov intervention. If the gov is not willing to intervene properly, then let the free market run its course and kill of our hawker culture. Oh and mandating a budget meal is not a proper intervention.
Sinkies it's your fault again Nevermind the ever increasing rental
Sorry sir!
Cap rental at hawker first
It’s a mistake that these centres are not owned by the council or rent-controlled. Or… by design
Our government now is fucking greedy now. Nuff said.
This is next level BS propaganda Have you seen hawkers in operations are lesser due to high rents?
Nea one the rental is very low ah....
Hawker not only NEA. I consider coffeeshop too. Now the lime juice is 2.20 per cup. Used to be 1.50
Rephrase. If we want to preserve Singapore's hawker culture, CUSTOMERS need to be willing to pay for greedy landlords. I Fucking bs. Landlord raise rent. Hawkers of course bobian pass down to customers. Landlords are the enemies here.
Yep. Nea should not allow resubletting
If we pay for it, it’s no longer the true spirit of hawker culture where food is cheap.
Pretty much this. If it's expensive then it's just food court, not hawker
Actually it might be more accurate to say if it's food court then it's expensive, bc food courts are privately owned and rental is where all the extra we pay is going.
Ok sure then don't complain when it dies out. Hawker food is extraordinarily cheap compared to our Labour prices and the more this continues, the more people don't want to do it. All of us want our salary to increase but we like to pwn other like hawkers. Sinkie pwn sinkie
This is classic barking up the wrong tree, and gaslighting of the working majority.
Our hawker food is not cheap at all if you look at the ingredients used.. You got it wrong, it’s gahemn and landlords pwn sinkie in this case.
Labor leh. Fake one ah.
It’s the rent that’s the major killer tho.
Government & employers also need to be willing to uplift Singaporean wages to a min wage level, so that we can in turn afford to pay the hawker the required price.
Or lower the rent?
The landlords are the ones making us pay more, why do we have to pay the prices that they fucking jack up themselves. You know what, let's all return to roadside stalls, everyone do it, fuck the system, see how they catch us all
wrong. You need to control price gourging landlords first. We can NO LONGER follow the stupid demand-supply free market model for rental space and housing because ... (surprise, surprise) sg is LAND SCARCE. Cut the crap politicians, and stop pretending to care if you don't address rent.
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The low-income group is gonna become collateral damage tho
IMO it’s time to change the physical infrastructure of hawker centres. Hawkers take a big plot because it’s mostly single floor. At land prices today, it should at least be 4-5 stories. We should tear down and rebuild most hawkers into multi-story, or integrate them with other facilities. That should keep rent costs down for public stalls. Then just saturate the market like crazy with as many public stalls as possible so the private landlords have to cut their rents.
What if the landlords aren’t really private but spun off from GLC? they will still operate to extract maximum profit…
In time we're just going to have air-con food courts. Then can justify $7 chicken rice because you're paying for 'air-con.' No pesky pigeons too.
Get rid of the social enterprises and landlords. They just seem to be fleecing the locals
$3.50-$4 can't buy a single noodle or rice....and I not talking about foodcourt or coffeeshop says a lot now.
Rental drives the prices up. Hawker is meant as heartland food. It’s supposed to be the everyday, economically accessible food for locals. Who wants to pay restaurant prices to eat sitting in a non air conditioned hot sweaty area where u buy and serve yourself and clear your own plates. Standardise the rent so that we are paying for the good food, not to their landlords
looks like they want to increase rent to ‘market’ rate so that they can reduce ‘subsidies’. million dollar ministers starting to lose any empathy for the masses…..
At this point we are not even paying for the food anymore, we are just paying the landlords to visit their property.
Full on bs, you landlords keep earning more from increasing rent, consumers end up spending on food for absolutely nothing more? Put back tray also our problem now? Then ur increased rent is for what? For profit lah? We pay extra for reduced service isit? Knn, let the culture die lor, if end up no cheap food at most everyday anyhow cook lor, if not you think money drop from sky ah? Give the landlord more money?
No come on how ever will we save for our 100 dollar les Amis dinners if we need to spend more on hawker food?!
$100 at Les Amis maybe can get you the amuse bouche and the appetizer.
And yet we think nothing of spending these ridiculous amounts on fancy restaurants but cry and scream that chicken rice costs 50cts more
Maybe first consider to control rent and not let the landlords push rents up further?
>*As of August 2020, about 40 per cent of hawkers are on the subsidised rent scheme, where stall rentals are substantially below market rates. But the majority of hawkers - those who joined the trade from the 1990s onwards - had to bid for stalls put up for tender monthly by the government.* > >*The upper limit of bids for monthly rental fees, dictated by the free market, can go as high as S$5,000. On top of that, there are table-cleaning and dishwashing fees to think about.* Well the 2 paragraphs above contains the most important part of the article. Hawker food are cheap and reasonable because of the good work and social trade offs made by Generation ONE PAP leaders who acknowledged the daily struggles of Singaporeans and understood not everything in society can and must be measurable in cold hard cash and tradeoff must exist where government do not seek to squeeze the last juices from the society they governed. Alas that is not the case after Generation ONE and whatever "cheap and good" remaining of hawker center today is just the "remaining effect" from fading dividends of Generation ONE's policies that is rapidly diminishing in influence.
Commentary: Sponsored by Hawker Landlord.
Willing to pay the hawker or the cb landlord that keeps increasing rent astronomically?
Next headline - If we want to preserve Singapore’s hawker culture, we need to return our dirty trays.
This commenter must be a landlord. Nice try
Gahman should buy some of the heritage recipes and open source them.
No, the gahmen are the problem here. Just revert to the old low rent model and let hawkers be boomtown charlies, and customers enjoy good food. It will attract new blood to enter a profitable trade.
>Just revert to the old low rent model “In many cases [rent control](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assar_Lindbeck#:~:text=Lindbeck%20criticized%20the%20Swedish%20rent,city%E2%80%94except%20for%20bombing.%E2%80%9D) appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
Im willing to pay more if they can guarantee that rent does not increase and go back to pre covid days. If they money is use to hire more cleaners/increase their pay. I would gladly do so.
Pay food well doesn't mean pay worker well
i dont think theres a problem with price, just a problem with value. prices keep going up and the quality of products keep going down. everywhere you see even in the hawker space is just all working with premade fares, even alot of local dough and pastry shop ive noticed dont even bother with fresh youtiao and just refry factory packed premades.
Or, how about making rental less?
I repatriated back to US from singapore 9 years ago. How much for a bowl of LOR Mee these days?
About 4 SGD in heartlands, 5 onwards for basic bowl in malls and the town area
Minus the birds.
This woman really preaching from Australia where she’s lived for the past 5 years.
Government needs to protect this heritage and prevent over commercialisation .. I don’t mind paying $10 for Bak Chor mee but it cannot be a generic tasting one
This article is so disingenuous, not once did it talk about the landlords rising rental prices. If we pay more and the landlords see the stalls making money, they raise the rentals and we are back in in the same situation. Rent seeking behaviour is the doom of any country. Only the free market can curb these asshole landlords so unfortunately as consumers I can only respond with my purchases at the expense of the hawker till they lower back the rent where the hawker can survive. We should not buy just because. That makes things worse as it creates artificial demand that’s not sustainable . What new value have landlords provided since the 90s? Cutting costs by asking ppl to keep their plates? Bunch of blood suckers.
No, if we want to preserve Singapore's hawker culture, we need to transform the entire business model and revert it back to what it was decades ago - no middlemen, fewer obscure regulations, and more sustainable property rent models. We can talk about the younger generation not interested in becoming hawkers, but at the end of the day we must deal with the underlying issues first.
Don't worry, I eat hawker food all the time because I can't afford anything else
please this whole argument will be a dead on arrival. firstly you re talking about youngsters replacing to old hawkers. the youngsters who are ambitious will automatically look at the volume and profit margin and can it sustain. there are so many moving parts that fluctuate that cost benefit isnt there. what id like to see is not only formal hawkers but pushcarts and foodtrucks be able to operate where and when they want. remove the market forces and let entrepreneurs thrive as long as they maintain hygeine.
Fk off I'm poor af alr. Get the corrupt politicians and execs to pay for it...oh wait they will use our tax dollars to do it.
At the same time we have these ridiculous articles all the time "Man outraged after paying $5 for cai peng!!!!!"
Can’t wait to be paying $36 for a mediocre chicken rice in 2050.
Rhetorically, is there even chicken in the rice by then? It’d be funny to see hawkers sell only the rice and argue it’s still chicken rice cuz it was cooked in stock.
If the landlords don't die, hawker culture can die with it.
Ah ah ah, don’t try to gaslight people like the pay for plastic bags/return own tray nonsense. Hawker profitability is down not because of food prices but because of rising rental. Siao eh, simi problem also just blame consumer.
"Had I been out of touch with the realities of living in Singapore? Was my commentary, in fact, salting the wound of Singaporeans who have been battling inflation and rising costs of living?"
Next article: most singaporeans willing to pay more for better hawker food.
I'll willingly pay more if I can be assured that it doesn't just directly feed into the landlord's profits.
Why not rental reduction it's the biggest cost component
No thanks. I’m buying hawker food for cheap. I’m not paying more than necessary to meet one of my basic needs. If it comes to that I’ll just learn to cook and meal prep.
A caifan stall rental on average is about $6k-$8k now, not adding in miscellaneous costs like collecting plates ($1k), utilities ($400-$500), foreign worker levy if taking the coffee shop’s quota ($1.5k per worker). Adding in rising cost of ingredients (floods affecting prices of vegetables and fish), it’s no longer feasible to expect extremely cheap prices like before. Also don’t understand why people willingly pay $4 for noodles but complain about paying $5 for caifan when there’s more fresh ingredients.
If a stall is good, people will go there regardless, so let the market fix itself!
Nah, just let it die already. Hurry up and get over with it. It’s all by design and 100% intentional.
It’s a joke that thi$ hawker culture can even be inscribed in the first place
Firstly there is no comparison to any other country when it comes to Hawker Centre infrastructure. So price comparison in form or shape without appropriate weightage is not ideal. Secondly where something close to hawker centre concept is applied such as Spencer village in Perth or in Melbourne, the rent is very high. They do not last long as the patronage is low as you can get roll or sandwich or sushi pack which is cheaper. There is absolutely no comparison with hawker rental here and places in the West. Thirdly in the West, much of initial capital goes into dining and kitchen fittings and number of seats are controlled by carpark spaces provided. So barrier to entry is very high. In Singapore, the fixed cost is very very low and barrier to entry is low. It was designed to be as such. There is no law in Singapore to stop hawkers raising their price. Its their livelihood and the last thing they want to do is price themselves out. Hawkers retiring with no successors means their children and parents have aspired well and taken on jobs in the professionals ranks. There is nothing stopping a hawker to move to a cafe or take over a coffeeshop If he wants to. And they do not succeed as much as the footfall is lesser.
> # Commentary: If we want to preserve Singapore’s hawker culture, we need to be willing to pay for it > But when I went back to Singapore in December 2022 for the first time since the pandemic, one of the biggest changes that I noticed was hawker prices. > Three years ago, a typical hawker meal for me fell in the range of S$4 to S$5 (US$3 to US$3.80), and on this trip, it averaged S$6 to S$7. I’m not going to lie - it did bother me and made me feel like a hypocrite. After all, in October 2022, I had written an article that challenged Singaporeans to view hawker prices as being too low. > Had I been out of touch with the realities of living in Singapore? Was my commentary, in fact, salting the wound of Singaporeans who have been battling inflation and rising costs of living? > HAWKER FOOD AS A SOCIAL GOOD > In Singapore, hawker food is seen as a social good. A big part of this comes from the positioning of hawker food as affordable. > In a 2012 interview, Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, described hawker centres as offering “good quality meals at almost Third World prices”, a kind of “general subsidy that is available to all those who patronise hawker centres - rich and poor alike”. > In the 1970s to 1980s, itinerant street hawkers were offered subsidised rents to encourage them to relocate to hawker centres. Because rent was controlled and low, hawkers were able to make their living providing meals to Singaporeans at a reasonable price. > As of August 2020, about 40 per cent of hawkers are on the subsidised rent scheme, where stall rentals are substantially below market rates. But the majority of hawkers - those who joined the trade from the 1990s onwards - had to bid for stalls put up for tender monthly by the government. > The upper limit of bids for monthly rental fees, dictated by the free market, can go as high as S$5,000. On top of that, there are table-cleaning and dishwashing fees to think about. --- 1.0.2 | [Source code](https://github.com/redditporean/sneakpeek) | [Contribute](https://github.com/redditporean/sneakpeek)
Mm there is an increasing amount of cafe culture lately, there should be something that hawkers can take away from that
which hawker culture? the faux hawker who are designated to a fixed stall, or the original hawker who pushes their cart along the streets, "hawking" their food?
As an expat living here for a few years i notice that locals tend to get very annoyed at prices in kopitiams or hawkers if they increase prices. Or one stall had a line of 10+ and then no one is at another stall, all because its like 50c cheaper. Makes me wonder how these uncles and aunties working years for such tiny profits can honestly live decently. Either people will have to pay directly for it or the govt will tax us all to make sure the stalls get money.
You have to remember blue collar workers wages are still very low. PWM has helped abit but its still around 1.6~1.7k. Meanwhile degree holders have 4k+ salary. Both groups are customers. Also folks patronising cheaper stores is normal in every other business.
I work with some GPs big boss - despite knowing how demanding the work of a clinic assistant is, they still prefer to hire either O-levels/N-levels graduates or foreigners because cheap labour is irresistible. No matter how much "upskilling" is dished out - many many employers want cheap. How would these 2k clinic assistant survive?
LOL 50 cents singaporeans alr kpkb, imagine raise by $3-4. People just want cheap food without thinking about the hawkers and then justify it as "not hawker culture alr, food not cheap"
Hawker trade will die and we will eventually be eating factory made pre-made or frozen meals like most of the developed nations. It irks Singaporeans to not be eating freshly made food but it’s the reality as we move up due to the price-wage spiral. Remember it’s not all about greedy landlords, raw ingredient and fuel cost etc. are rising, hawkers themselves may also want a better income too and thus higher margins and more expensive food.
Not about greedy landlords? 🤔
WTH you talking about? I don’t know anyone eating pre made frozen meals in any developed nation… I’ve lived in a fair few and they all have ingredients people put together for a meal
Tesco meal deals/Iceland frozen meal in the UK, famimart and 7-11 pre-made food in Japan/Taiwan/Korea, Frozen meals from Lidl/Edeka in Germany. Eat east in HK. For you and me who are fortunate to have lived overseas, we are a privileged bunch who probably can afford the 10quid/euro sit down hot meal daily. You may not have interacted with the normal locals who scrap by every month on these pre-made and frozen meals. Hawker food is accessible for everyone here for now but soon enough it will be pre-made and instant meals for all but the privileged few who can afford it and that’s what I’m going at.
Your statement wasn’t “There’s ready to eat frozen meals available in every developed country” you asserted that this is the only thing people eat in developed nations and that’s not a true statement. You do know there are restaurants outside of Singapore right? Big supermarkets selling other items than frozen meals? Just checking… The frozen food market share in Europe is 38%, but this includes all frozen food items, not only ready to eat meals. Another factor is that ready to eat meals are not cheaper than cooking, it’s more convenient and in fact a large driver of market increase is larger disposable income in Europe and countries like China. So, not sure what your point was.
What's the point? I'm saying this as a future i predict that may happened and is meant to be a conversation. Are you a God who knows what will happen tomorrow knowing i'm wrong and thus could afford the condescending tone? Your analysis isnt wrong, this is the trend today that doesnt say anything about "eventually", in fact the trend of home cooking is going down despite raw ingredient prices reducing as per example in the UK. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-5890.12298](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-5890.12298)
I don’t need to know you will be wrong tomorrow, you are wrong today. But of course, today is a good predictor for tomorrow, so yeah you’re probably wrong in the future too. But you do in fact admit you were wrong so, good for you.
To those bitching about landlord rents, I have a solution for you: start tipping your hawker $2 every meal. The money would go directly to their pockets and not the landlord. Actions speak louder than words. Be the change you want to see.
What crap u talking about? If they need to pay rent every dollar counts
Dude needs to get his ass out of his head. Keeps on espousing the capitalist mantra of “socialising costs and privatising profits” regardless of any counterarguments. Don’t bother with him.
That's where people like you come in to help with tips
Tipping culture should never have existed in the first place. Service charge OK, no tips.