Know how hawkers work before evaluating tenders

I refer to the report “Foodfare to review price caps at hawker centre if necessary” (July 30).

My thinking on this is that the bidders are essentially large catering companies that have experience running the food-court model and are running the new hawker centres based on their food-court model.

I am not sure of the differences in operating these two entities. If stalls in food courts are operated by company employees, or the food ingredients are centrally procured, there already lies a fundamental difference.

The National Environment Agency might have or should perhaps have done research with existing hawkers on how they work before evaluating tenders. Ordering that prices be kept down without consideration of all these factors would be naive.

These are ifs and buts. The bottom line is that hawkers are only making a living, like the rest of us buying our food. We may want to consider their constraints or difficulties in providing quality food at affordable rates as much as the public’s (wallet) constraints.