Nostalgia over hawker culture may have trapped us into an outdated view that hawker fare must always be very cheap.
By Chua Mui Hoong, Senior Columnist, The Straits Times, 23 Nov 2024
Perhaps it is no coincidence that while we wring our hands about how to make hawker culture sustainable in Singapore, hawker fare is thriving in Perth.
This crossed my mind while I was having kopi-o gau and kaya toast one morning in Perth, where I now live, and the thought developed over the next day, when I had nasi lemak and kopi peng.
For those who don’t know, Perth is home to a multitude of Singaporean and Malaysian restaurants and cafes whose selling point is hawker food.
My nasi lemak here cost A$14.50 (S$12.70) and came with a small mix of fried peanuts and anchovies, one hard-boiled egg and a whole deep-fried chicken thigh. Kopi peng was A$5. My kaya toast and kopi-o set was A$12.50.
I have gone beyond feeling shock at the higher prices for hawker food in Perth. This is Australia, after all, where the minimum wage is A$24.10 an hour. Restaurants close in the afternoon before reopening for dinner, as it isn’t worth paying wages to remain open for the odd customer who comes in mid-afternoon. Eating out is expensive, so most people cook and eat at home.
In Singapore, cooked food prices remain very affordable, especially in hawker centres and coffee shops. A similar kaya toast set with a beverage, plus two soft-boiled eggs, would cost me around $3 in a hawker centre or coffee shop in Singapore. NTUC Foodfare even sells this signature breakfast set for $2.20, with union members getting a special price of $1.80 for a beverage, one slice of kaya toast and two soft-boiled eggs.
How little is too little for a kaya toast set?
Local food chain Toast Box charged $7.40 for its kaya toast set, drawing flak online. A reader posted a photo that showed the same set had cost $5.70 in 2020. A subsequent online poll found that 88 per cent of 7,425 respondents thought a kaya toast set should not cost above $5.
It got me wondering why hawker culture is facing an existential threat in Singapore, but Malaysian and Singaporean eateries, offering similar fare, do a roaring trade in Perth. Could the prices of hawker fare hold the key?
The issue cropped up in Parliament last week, when the Progress Singapore Party’s leaders moved a motion calling for a review of hawker policies. The motion was reworded by People’s Action Party MPs to call for a regular review of hawker policies that can “sustain and grow Singapore’s hawker culture so that Singaporeans can continue to enjoy good and affordable hawker food while enabling hawkers to earn a fair livelihood” (italics mine). The amended motion was passed by all MPs, showing cross-party support for hawker culture.
Hawker culture unifies Singaporeans. Hawker centres bring together diners of different races, ages, and social strata to enjoy food derived from our multiracial heritage. A millionaire towkay may sweat through his bowl of mee rebus, seated at the same table as the single mum sharing wonton mee with her child.
Hawker culture also comes with a certain heritage. The early hawker centres built in the 1970s housed former street hawkers and rented out food stalls at low rates to a generation of less-educated, low-income Singaporeans who sold cooked food or drinks to make a living. A hawker stall provided a humble, yet secure, means of livelihood. My parents, who emigrated from China to Singapore in the 1950s, belonged to that group. Their stall in an ulu (remote) part of Singapore in Pasir Panjang, near an oil refinery, enabled them to sell char kway teow and other dishes, and to put three children to school.
Many Singaporeans, like me, are deeply proud of the working-class roots of hawker culture. We want hawker centres to continue being mass dining halls for all. We don’t want them gentrified or made hipster.
Most Singaporeans will have their favourite hawker stall or coffee shop where they enjoy their morning teh or kopi, where they go for their fix of mee siam, chicken rice or nonya kueh. As an emigrant who now lives overseas, I plan my visits back to Singapore around the hawker food I miss – my favourite bak chor mee in the Veerasamy area, the prawn noodle and chicken rice at Shunfu Mart near my old home, and a recent discovery – the Teochew soon kueh at the social enterprise Yoon’s Social Kitchen in Aljunied. When I meet a new Singaporean kaki in Perth, it is nearly always to catch up over hawker fare in a Singaporean or Malaysian eatery.
Singapore hawker culture has become a strong unifier for its people. We should do our best to promote it, and sustain it.
Ways to improve hawker culture
Each time the topic comes up, there are many suggestions on what to do. Change the bidding system to a fixed rent or balloting system.
The Government’s reply on this is that, in fact, the vast majority of cooked food stallholders pay rent that is below the assessed market rent. Only 4 per cent pay above the market rent, and even for this group, the rent will be lowered after their first tenancy term.Tackle the lack of workers by allowing foreigners to work at hawker centres.
The Government will allow hawker stall operators to hire long-term visit pass holders as assistants from Jan 1, 2025. Having too many foreigners working in hawker stalls will affect the taste and quality of hawker fare. (Already, many of us have lamented the loss of the traditional taste of zichar fare in coffee shops that hire cooks from China.)Have a central bulk ordering system for key supplies to lower costs.
This is a pretty good idea, but take-up for this may be low, as food quality is a competitive advantage and many stall operators prefer to have their own suppliers. There is also nothing to prevent hawkers at a centre from grouping together to do this if they find it useful, without the need for a central procuring system at the national or district level, with all the attendant logistics and coordination involved.
Putting our money where our mouth is
The one issue that many people don’t talk about is their own role in the ecosystem as hawker diners. Are we willing to put our money where our mouth is, and pay more for hawker food to keep hawker culture sustainable?
MP Edward Chia, who was a co-founder of Timbre Group, which runs hawker centres, remarked in Parliament: “Hawkers have expressed that while customers are willing to pay $15 for a bowl of ramen, they hesitate to pay $5 for a handmade bowl of fish ball noodles.”
He urged Singaporeans to reflect on the social compact and “take a moment to consider how each of us can contribute to helping our (hawkers) earn a fair and sustainable livelihood”.
Many Singaporeans have double standards when it comes to willingness to pay for food and drink. We think nothing of paying $7.90 for a flat white (espresso coffee with milk) in Starbucks and baulk at a $2 kopi (local coffee with condensed milk) at a coffee shop, pointing to hawker stalls that charge $1.
We pay $20 for prawn aglio e olio and complain about a $6 bowl of prawn noodles. Western food prices may be higher because meals are served in a restaurant setting in air-conditioned comfort with table service. But the price difference we are prepared to stomach goes beyond that difference in ambience. Even within the same hawker centre, there is usually a difference in price between what the Western food stall selling pasta charges and the one selling wonton or prawn mee.
I wonder if our attachment to the hawker culture of the past blinds us to the need for hawker culture to develop a future.
Many people want their hawker food not only affordable, but also cheap. In their mind, hawker food isn’t something to pay top dollar for, or even medium dollar. They may subconsciously think that hawker food has to be cheap enough for the little old lady who collects cardboard or the ah pek living on a tiny state allowance.
Even though most of us can well afford chicken rice that costs more than $3 a plate, we bristle when chicken rice costs $5, because we think that old lady or ah pek would struggle at that price point. And so we maintain an indignant vigilante attitude towards hawker prices – not just for our own sake, but as watchdogs for the poor among us.
On social media, it is not uncommon to see angry comments when a hawker centre raises prices by, say, 10 cents a cup of coffee. Most people will then lament that the rising cost of food is creating difficulty for those with a low income. Not many people will say that they themselves can’t afford that increase. An odd few may acknowledge that prices have to rise to cope with inflation.
When we react that way to rising hawker food prices, we create a social milieu that forces hawkers to keep prices down even when their costs go up. Every time someone shares yet another post boasting about a super-cheap hawker dish, I think with sympathy of the hawker’s long years toiling at his stall and ongoing long hours to keep it going. What if that noodle dish had gone up to $6? Could he have found someone willing to take over the trade, gone for an earlier retirement and not have to labour over his wok at the age of 70? And customers could have continued to enjoy their fix with a younger hawker with another 20 years in him.
Keeping hawker food prices perpetually low robs hawkers of the ability to improve their standards of living. It locks them into a cycle of hard work and long hours, for mediocre incomes. While some hawkers do so well they become millionaires, many others struggle. The most revealing statistic is that the median age of hawkers, as at 2021, was 60. This shows that the hawker trade is not attracting fresh talent fast enough. Few young people want to take up the hawker trade, because they can see the long hours put in for often low rewards.
When my parents were due to retire in the late 1980s, as they hit their 60s, they asked my siblings and I if any of us wanted to take over the stall. As the direct offspring of first-generation hawkers, we could have taken over the stall at a highly subsidised rent – as I recall, it was around $100 a month. I had done the accounts for the stall for a whole year when I was 14, when the income tax department went after my (non-English speaking) parents for a tax return, and the tax official said we had to keep daily records. So I knew how much – or how little – we made each day after all the outgoings. None of us three children were interested in repeating our parents’ lifestyle, and my father returned the hawker licence to the Ministry of the Environment, where it remained in its archives.
The hawker trade will not attract young people unless hawkers can make a better living by increasing their prices and their profits.
As the parliamentary motion made clear, hawker culture has to be sustainable while achieving two conflicting goals: providing affordable food for customers, and enabling hawkers to have a sustainable livelihood. Low prices benefit customers. But low prices keep profits too small to attract new hawkers.
Even in Malaysia, where Singaporeans head for cheap fare, hawker food prices have gone up. In Kuala Lumpur, a cup of kopi costs around RM$2.50 (S$0.75) to RM $3, while a bowl of noodles typically costs RM$10. While Singapore’s favourable exchange rate makes these prices very low in Singapore dollars terms, they are higher for locals when you factor in salaries in Malaysia. Median wages in Malaysia for formally employed employees are RM$2,600 (S$780). In Singapore, median income from work is about $4,555. In Singapore, kopi costs around $1.50 a cup and noodles cost around $4 at a hawker centre.
To sustain a rise in hawker food prices, Singaporeans need to update their mindset on hawker culture. We need to see hawker fare not just as cheap meals, but as delicious and high-quality food at affordable prices.
Affordability has to be pegged to today’s median income, not our outdated memories of the past when noodles were $2 a plate and coffee 50 cents a cup.
Hawkers aren’t the low-income food sellers given a livelihood of yore – many of them have progressed to become skilled chefs who mastered the art of preparing that one dish over decades. Hawker centres are no longer places to feed the hungry and poor masses. They are inclusive, egalitarian eating places that provide food for the median worker and family (median income from work for a household is now $12,673). For the lower-income, budget meals are always an option at many food centres.
Even as we debate ways to keep hawker culture sustainable, we should not forget the missing ingredient in this discussion: customers’ willingness to pay a fair price for hawker food.
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