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‘Tasting portion’ among ideas to get more into hawker trade

SINGAPORE — To encourage more to enter the hawker trade, stalls could be set aside for aspiring hawkers to try their hand at running the business under the guidance of veterans.

Shot of stalls at Amoy Street Food Centre, Maxwell road, taken on Feb 3 2017.  Photo: Koh Mui Fong/TODAY

Shot of stalls at Amoy Street Food Centre, Maxwell road, taken on Feb 3 2017. Photo: Koh Mui Fong/TODAY

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SINGAPORE — To encourage more to enter the hawker trade, stalls could be set aside for aspiring hawkers to try their hand at running the business under the guidance of veterans.

And with most hawker centres located in the heartlands, they could be developed into “social spaces” — equipped with Wi-Fi to improve the dining experience — for community bonding, including getting community groups to partner hawker centres to organise activities such as cooking demonstrations.

Hawkers could also make bulk purchases of common ingredients to cut costs while tedious and repetitive tasks such as the cutting, chopping and mixing of ingredients could be automated to reduce the time taken to prepare food and improve turnaround.

These were some of the recommendations submitted by a 14-member Hawker Centre 3.0 Committee on Friday (Feb 3), after being tasked to find ways to improve these spaces and promote the trade.

By 2027, nearly 20 more hawker centres will be built. More than 800 stakeholders — including hawkers, members of the public, cleaning contractors and other industry players — had provided feedback to the committee over the past year.

Formed last January, the committee focused on four areas: Sustaining the hawker trade, improving productivity in the hawker centres, enhancing the social spaces in these centres and promoting graciousness.

Currently, the trade is made up of hawkers with a median age of 59. To encourage new entrants, the committee suggested allocating these “incubation stalls” for aspiring hawkers to experience what it is like running a stall for six to 12 months, before deciding if they wanted to continue in the trade.

The stalls should be fitted with the basic equipment while mentors, such as veteran hawkers, may be on hand to guide them on the necessary culinary and management skills. This could help correct expectations about the job and reduce drop-out rates, added the committee.

A greater push to productivity could come from using centralised dishwashing services, cashless payment modes and making bulk purchases of common ingredients. This would address manpower constraints and cut costs in the long run, noted the committee.

But during the focus group discussions on productivity, there were divided views over the idea of a sharing a central kitchen area.

The experienced hawkers had raised concerns of recipe leaks, while the newer hawkers found the idea useful for picking up tips from veterans in the trade.

The committee also found that there was potential to raise individual hawkers’ productivity by automating tedious and repetitive tasks such as cutting chillies, chopping onions and mixing dough.

And as part of the recommendations to promote graciousness at these centres, they proposed cultivating a “tray-return culture” by dispelling the misconception that returning trays would deprive cleaners of their jobs, for instance.

Noting that many of the new initiatives were implemented by socially-conscious operators recently appointed by the National Environment Agency, the committee proposed to continue exploring alternative management models for hawker centres.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli said on Friday his ministry is studying the report and will give their response in due course.

Hawker Wong Kok Weng, 36, told TODAY that the concept of incubation stalls would attract younger aspiring hawkers.

The first-time hawker suffered losses in the first six months of opening his salad stall at Amoy Street Food Centre because he did not know how to set up his stall and had problems submitting the complete applications for his permits. A mentor or a trial period to test out how to run the business could help younger hawkers avoid that, especially when they have limited capital, he noted.

Mr Raymond Tan, 59, who sells dumplings and kueh at Blk 50A Marine Terrace, noted that there should be subsidies to cover the costs of automating processes, similar to the productivity subsidies available for small and medium enterprises. But automation could also take away some of the traditional skills involved in making some foods, he added.

In addition to these recommendations to improve productivity, owner of a braised duck and kway chap stall at Smith Street Food Centre Melvin Chew asked for more flexibility in hiring stall assistants.

“Hawkers are not allowed to employ work-permit holders … the hawkers have to sustain their business themselves (and are left) to ask their friends, parents and family to help out,” he lamented.

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