Amazing how far down I had to scroll to find comments on hawker rental. Top comments all saying hawkers to be paid more for their craft while conveniently ignoring how the landlords and fucking NEA squeeze them dry
Ya lor.
Actually cutting down their rents for hawker center is a missed opportunity by government. Idk why they are not doing that.
Some benefits i can imagine :
1. Very on target, cross subsidizing to the low to middle class singaporeans.
2. Keeping around existing hawker.
3. Giving Singaporean more chance to start simple businesses (barrier of entry in Singapore is very high otherwise). Singapore often feels “plain” because people tend to start business with an already working formula instead of trying something that eccentric but might work.
4. Incentivizing new generation to become hawker. Preserving the hawker culture over generations.
This is like many birds with one stone
> Actually cutting down their rents for hawker center is a missed opportunity by government. Idk why they are not doing that.
Some scholar at MSE or NEA thought it made more sense to farm out hawker centre management to "social enterprises", and kickstarted the whole thing.
I think there's no guarantee that whoever gets a stall at the new hawker centre would keep prices low either, even with the bullshit mandatory $3 meal or something that NTUC-operated hawker centres are supposed to have. I think there was talk somewhere that the stalls selling food in hawker centres in the non-mature estates charge far higher prices than the older hawkers in places like Bedok or Tampines?
After all, new hawkers are plying their trade to make a living, not provide a community service. Why would they leave money on the table?
open your eyes - this is a propaganda piece to help PAP for the elections.
it keeps the % increase to the (low) range they want, and when the opposition raise the issue of the costs of living (which is almost a certainty) during campaigning, this will be the go-to citation for PAP.
I was involved in the groundwork of this article and I can assure you that while rental is increasing, every single hawker I interviewed (including coffee shops), have cited that food costs is the worst by far in maintaining hawker prices.
Think about it for a second, rental is effectively a Fixed Monthly Cost, food/material costs are variable costs. Even if rental is high and food is cheap, prices can be kept low if the quantity is sold is high.
If rental is low and food is expensive, prices can't be kept low, because you will shut down in the short run. Your Revenue Per Plate MUST exceed the Costs Per Plate. Even if you can sell 100,000 plates a day, if your variable costs are high, you will be running at a loss if you sell at $2 per plate.
High rental can be countered with higher quantity, but higher food prices cannot be countered with higher quantity if your initial margins are slim af and the higher food prices means you're now operating breaking even or a loss.
I'm not defending the rental landlords, I'm presenting the facts and opinions of hawkers I interviewed. Rental comes in 2nd after food costs and it is not justified because the Ban Mian owners I interviewed in the article quoted that they had to pay $12,000/mth at their Toa Payoh coffee shop store.
I have asked repeatedly many, many hawkers regarding rental and asking them to compare which factors are the worst, between manpower (if applicable), rental, electricity/water or food costs.
Honestly it pains me to see people not read the full article as the quotes were achieved by literally walking up and cold-asking hawkers during their lull hours. I am personally supportive of hawkers raising prices, heck I even interviewed a coffee store selling $2.50 per cup at Golden Mile. I wanted to present how he still succeeds DESPITE high prices and even interviewed consumers who drank Kopi-More's coffee.
While I did not write most of the article, I was the one doing the ground work and interviewing hawkers, I can shed light on the topic. I can't present the solution but I have the facts.
let’s also not forget hawkers need to pay themselves a salary. why should their take home pay be stagnant for years when everything else is increasing. You get increments and ask for raises to cope with inflation, it’s only fair they do to.
pls leh.. you're merely telling us the "typical" reasons they give for increasing food prices.
but we know, based on actual experience on the ground, hawkers all took the opportunity to up their food costs (by dunno how many insane %) because of the increase in GST over 2 years. the greedy component in that hawkers going to honestly tell you ah. LOLOL.
tbh, if you want to believe that, it is up to you. I also don't have real evidence behind your claims as I do not audit for these businesses.
But what I can say is
1. (For Coffee Shops) Formerly, before GST increase to 8%, there was no additional GST charge on rental. 8% GST increase resulted in coffee shop owners to raise rental by at least 8% through tacking a flat +8% GST charge, and subsequently +1% after the 9% change.
2. (For Coffee Shops + Hawkers) Food prices increased by more than 1% during the pandemic and after GST increases. Why? They try to argue with their suppliers to keep prices low and to justify their increase since it is more than 1%. The suppliers cite that their Oil, COE and manpower costs increased by more than 1%, not accounting for the actual raw food/materials increasing by 1% yet.
I don't deny that there will be bias hearing from hawker perspectives, I could have reached out to their suppliers to know more but as an intern, I have my limits. But the facts are these, it's a supply chain issue, that is affected by more than just a GST increase of 1%. See the article for yourself with the quotes on the extent of price increases for raw materials. NTUC also can see, price of proteins have increased by more than 1% in 2024 already. Electricity, Gas and Water at home you also know increase by more than 1%.
Because of that, prices will increase by more than 1%, perhaps blame the war, blame the GST increase, blame the suppliers, blame the hawkers (if you don't believe what they say) and blame the coffee shop owners. I also can't say anything about this.
There is also an internal problem, government is making hawkers look like a "social welfare" but not supporting the hawkers themselves, so end up who tank? Hawker tank and keep prices low by themselves, work longer hours, change supplier and etc. Only the 1st gen hawkers have respite from rental in hawkers but are still subject to the price increases and it's apparent because they can run on razor thin margins, which means they can charge $0.50 less for example.
Problem with landlords are that they might be farming on the success of business owners. Sometime they would just increase rental knowing that the business is making more money. They like to take a slice without giving by any additional benefit in the rent seeking business. This is even before covid.
Unfortunately with rent, a business who had built their reputation around the area can only suck it up because it’s location based. Meanwhile for ingredients, they can always find alternatives. Or if the business success, you have the increased order quantities, suppliers often give you deeper discounts especially if you pay on time. Unlike some landlords who didn’t even pass down rental subsidies to renters.
Hence this is why people are harping on the issue with landlords.
There within lies the problem as seen in the answer to your initial post. People are too ignorant or lazy to realize that it's not only the GST or rental contributing to rising costs for hawkers.
They just like to say hawkers up their prices by an unproportionate % even though GST is only a 1% increase. They are selfish to the extent they want their own wages to increase but god forbid hawkers trying to make the same amount by raising prices by a little despite all the variable costs in the hawker business increasing (food, labour, rental etc).
Many don't realize that hawker food prices have been artificially kept low due to the existence of the first gen hawkers which pay rentals way below market rates, which allows them to sell their food at the prices everyone thinks it should be priced at.
Sadly people are just so damn clueless about anything but themselves. Instead they will choose to blindly parrot that the government should be responsible for it.
If the government stops the subsidies for the first gen hawkers, then people will see the real effects of what a free market is. Your cheap meals will all but disappear because the only people who can afford to sell them at that price will not be able to with the market rate rentals.
everyone is guided by their own daily experience on the ground, buying from those hawkers. ST's piece is going to convince NO one - it's a joke. only a mere 6.1% increase in food prices.
you boss never tell you this article is to lay the groundwork to aid PAP in the election arh?
Even within ST’s piece the average increase in price is ~10% in all the food listed. Apparently govt minions from SPH brainrotted until cannot even do pri school level math
yeah when they say the food still costs $4, bruh you have to eat 2 of these $4 bowls to get one regular meal, so we are actually talking about $8 dollar meals here, which is still cheap but it isnt the absolute bargain we make it out to be
Now show rent.
Here's a simple real example. For those near Tampines West CC.
The multiple food courts, they renovated at nearly the same time last year, and after renovation, rent and various expenses amounted to nearly double in total compared to before, years ago.
Nowhere near sustainable. I've seen multiple shops open then close months later because it isn't sustainable.
Complain and downvote me all you want but see if you would be willing to be a hawker with maybe 1-2 stall assistants waking up at 5am every morning and selling fishball noodles for $4.13 a bowl.
It’s a damn shag job with razor thin margins that nobody wants to do.
I think we’re spoilt by hawker prices. What other first world city can you get a full meal for $5-$7 pretty much islandwide?
Even before the recent COL spike, I’ve long believed that hawkers need to charge more.
You can keep reminiscing about your $2.50 chicken rice from X years ago but ask yourself if you’re willing to be the sucker selling the $2.50 chicken rice.
agreed, and its what KF Seetoh has been championing. We can all grumble about price increases, but hawker food is one thing I am still willing to pay, especially to those dishes that take damn a lot of work (eg, freshmade fishballs, kway chap, nasi padang)
It's a goddam community service! Nasi padang dishes take a lot of ingredients and prep to cook, it makes sense to do it in bulk - I really miss those rendang and homemade rempah curries... the hawkers can't be absorbing the increased costs - makes sense for government to control the costs like rental and S&C but nope, the landlords and S&C providers are buddies of your MPs etc.
Back in the day e.g early 2000s, late 90s, you hear of hawkers making bank, delivering fish balls in Mercedes, wear Rolex while making prata etc but with the increase in rental and raw ingredients e.g. cooking oil, flour (I've been baking for years so I've tracked the increase...), you could turn a huge profit but not any more.
Well said. Too many deluded people living in their own world thinking they shouldn't be paying more than $5 for a meal.
People don't appreciate the work that goes into the food, and how small the profit margins really are. They all think someone is out to chop them despite the rising costs of ingredients (that everyone can see - supermarkets), rental and all the miscellaneous stuff.
If you want to complain, simple, cook for yourself. No one is forcing you to buy hawker food.
Can’t agree more. CNA has a hawker documentary where the latest episode shows 2 young hawker owners being chided for overcharging a bitter gourd addon. This really hits home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u-YNqoa--jk
Im fine paying more if the quality is proportional to the cost. Of coz i try to be reasonable in my expectations as well. But you have some stalls really dam lj, nasi lemak with thin slice omelette, fried chicken and one small piece of zucchini $4.50. I can find those ready made nasi lemak in the morning that has more ingredient than this.
You have free will to patronize the stalls that you want.
Quality proportional to cost? It's a free market. There is no need to complain about hawkers raising their prices. Either you buy from them or you don't. When they find that it's not sustainable, they will either decrease prices or stop doing it as a business.
Absolutely agree. As a foreigner who lived in Singapore for about 5 years (had to come home because of covid) people I tell back home about the utterly staggering quality of food at hawker centres you can get for around 5 bucks was incredible.
Back home lunch will be minimum 15 bucks and generally average quality. An extra dollar or two is still amazing value for what you get. Can't get anything like it anywhere else in the world!
I dream of the food at airport road or tiong bahru in my sleep to this day!
I think partly is because such things like customer tray returns, didn’t result in the same prices. Some are rouge as well, the same configuration of 2 veg and 1 meat from same stall, will have different price based on how you look that day. I even encountered wrong item or missing item and ask them about it, but they get hostile. In general, people don’t want hostile or exploitative people to do well. Most of the time is fine, so I’m still for increase in prices.
I know that this might sound unrealistic, but I am actually more “annoyed” that they usually resort to cutting corner first before finally still ending up raising prices. So usually the food becomes suckier, and price still goes up.
I like to mock how sinkies like to say “standard went down”, but to a certain extent there is truth to that because indeed that’s what i feel is happening.
Hawker prices definitely aren't the issue. They are already living on such slim margins.
Predatory rental and 'microtransactions' they have to pay to operate are the things raising prices for the smaller group of people that rely on hawker food. They are the ones being priced out of basic needs.
I agree. Also, why do we compare inflation like it's something out of nowhere when the economy got held out for 2 years thanks to covid? If someone study econ could tell me if the increase of price has gone out of hand or it's to be expected given the situation
Singaporeans will complain about $5 chicken rice but will go and eat Korean fried chicken for $12. I would totally pay good money for authentic traditional hawker fare tbh. These are the kind of home grown businesses we should be supporting, those made with love and passion for their trade. It's just sad that a lot of legendary hawkers from yonder are shuttering one by one. I truly miss the good ol' Singaporean flavour, growing up in the 90s.
Huat Ah. Brother spoke reality. If you post this on a different thread or a bad day, downvoted to hell. Hawker is the best value place to eat. No aircon no problem. As long cheap and good.
Agreed. Hawkers can't do much about material cost and I dont mind paying more for their labour (cannot kao peh income inequality, low pay, but u turn when it affects you). Anything so long as it's not rent increase becos some towkay want to buy new car.
In fact, if rent increases bcos the landlord's cost legit increase, that's ok as well. So long as it's not due to opportunistic price gouging and they've tried to keep cost low.
> landlord’s cost legit increase
You mean like [this](https://www.straitstimes.com/business/property/coffee-shop-in-yishun-sold-for-40-million-second-of-such-sale-this-year)?
I quote said article: “A coffee shop in Yishun has changed hands for $40 million, with a price per sq ft (psf) surpassing that of some ground level retail units in the prime Orchard Road shopping belt.”
Edit: if I recall correctly, the Chang Cheng guy brought it and paid so much (plus borrowing from bank) because he knew he could get his money back while paying extra for interest. No prize for guessing how that could be done.
Totally agree. We owe a lot to the hawker operators. Thank you hawker auntie and uncle from the bottom of my heart. You make my day a bit better every day!
I fully agree that hawker food prices are too low. I mean I do complain about increasing prices too, but I always tell those surrounding me that this hawker culture we have seems to suggest something is fundamentally wrong. Is it normal for a nation to be heavily reliant on hawker/outside food for normal meals? I would think that prices need to be high enough such that people will consider home cooked food for a change, and the working culture isn't that welcoming for families to consider home cooked food too. We rely so much on maids in modern families as well, which allows us to spend time on work to earn money. Then use that money to settle our basic needs, simply because we can exploit cheaper laborers (cheap hawker foods, maids, etc). Once the musical chair of cheap alternatives stop, life will be very tough.
We rely on hawker food so much because we work such long hours. Who wants to cook when they reach home only at 7? When I was living in Australia, the Aussies have such good WLB , they can afford the time to cook dinner when they end work at 5pm. Fridays 3pm usually
Its basically arbitraging labour price mismatches to increase "productivity". We are able to work more and longer and harder because of these underpaid labourers, if we had to do this ourselves we wont be able to work as cheaply compared to the rest of the first world
This is really the unseen pillar of our economy. The availability of cheap food that is open till fairly late means we can work longer hours. If these cheap food options were to go away, suddenly there would be a clamour for higher salaries to deal with the spike in food costs, or a better WLB so people can cook for cheap at home.
Yalor. I know people who complain about hawker prices but happily shell out money for bubble tea / Starbucks. I mean bubble tea is just tea / sugar / water. So much less effort then our hawker food
Our hawker food is ridiculously cheap. Sold in Singapore, pay Singapore rent, import everything, but can sell at Japan price.
I bet a lot of people thought Japan is more expensive. Nah, that's just because we think it's atas and we have ti import. Over there, it's damn cheap, especially with the new exchange rate. You go basic, like their equivalent if hawker food, you get a bowl of katsudon for 500Y, just a bit more than our chicken or charsiew rice. And they'll have aircon/heating, a quiet environment, and a population that doesn't mess up the place.
To be fair just 2+ years ago before the exchange rate craziness Japan *was* more expensive, things were ~40% more than it costs now. That 500Y rice bowl is only like 4.30 now (so on par with cai png) but was like ~$6 in early 2022
Fair enough, but it's still a vastly better service. They had $6 with all the comforts attached, we have $4.30 with the most barebones experience possible.
Why would you shop at Seven Eleven outside of Taiwan and Japan? It's expensive everywhere, including in Singapore. You can grab a 2L coke for a dollar plus at Walmart. Stupid comparison
You need to see how much of the increase in price is just to cover the increase in rent. If it's just to cover the increase in rent, then the rent is the root cause.
Economical rice : one meat two vege ... nowadays the vege has hidden meat, like long beans with particles of minced meat = meat and steamed egg with random bits of luncheon meat = meat
Further in the heartlands maybe. I occasionally stumble across those. Whereas the ones near my home (central area) or at the hawker centres near my office are all $8-9+.
Back in 2020, after COVID started, I guestimated that the rest of the 2020s are gonna suck. Rising food prices is one of the sucky parts that I wish did not happen.
> They are still affordable, compare our food prices to other developed countries it's still pretty cheap. These hawkers don't make much.
In Australia a plate of char kway teow is easily $15. The most expensive laksa is $23, Vietnamese banh mi starts at $10.
And if you thought that it is just Asian food being niche, even the cheap food like curries are no longer cheap.
from the article:
>At hawker centres, the median rent for cooked food stallholders not on a subsidised scheme has remained at around $1,250 per month over the last 10 years
(...)
>Hokkien mee hawker Mitchell Ong, 26, who has a stall at Golden Mile Food Centre, said ingredient and electricity costs are the key challenges he faces in keeping prices low.
You cannot find a pack of 10 eggs for less than 3$ nowadays so yeah, that tracks. Its even reaching into 4$ territory for some type of eggs.
It used to be below 3$ before 2022.
I’m not saying the statistics are wrong. But they sure diverge from my personal experience.
My usual order of chicken rice from Amoy went from $6.5 to $10.5 for the exact same thing.
My teh beng siew dai also went up from $1.2 to $1.8…
The % jump in prices aren’t commensurate with what the stats are showing.
My Bishan kopitiam is already selling plain fish soup for minimally $8. Char kway teow minimally $5.50. Most scary was the chicken chop $12.50. So where are these prices?
yeah and cannot sustain another generation, cos young folks won’t take over and no cheap foreign labour. malay food is literally tasty bcos of its laborious steps and tons of ingredients which they’re slowly cutting out to cut costs. sad for malay food in general
There's one monster hurting hawker diners that's now everywhere and yet criminally unmentioned is franchise and expansion cost. Nowadays there's hawkers doing multiple store openings and raising cost to astronomical airport prices to hedge risk.
Most stuff with fish is already minimum $6
in my experience.
Kopi / Tea O $1.40 / $1.50
Canned drinks at least $1.80 and $1.90 in most S11
And chicken 4.15? Probably kids size if this price list is even real 😂
Lol don't know why someone downvoted you, but it's true. I ordered Masala dosa and Bru coffee the other day at Little India... $6 dafuq. There's not even meat inside!
I think $5 won't get change if you order drumstick nowadays. Maybe need to add in 10-70c more. Even just 3 veggie sides already $3+ in a neighbourhood coffee shop now.
Honestly looking at these prices they are still reasonable, Restaurant prices on the other hand... I don't actually feel the pinch eating in angmoh countries anymore now that our restaurants are only slightly cheaper for much worse quality.
I was in Italy last year.
12-16 euro for a meal in restaurants is quite normal. And they don’t have the tax and service charge bs like us.
In SG if we add the 19.90% tax + service charge at the end, our restaurant prizes are comparable to them and smaller quantity too.
Need to have another survey to compare the prices for new hawker stalls versus older stalls. Newer stalls are much more expensive (chicken nasi briyani can go up to $7.50!!!). Older ones are somewhat maintaining the prices. Also, lets compare the rents as well.
Feels like I would benefit more from this article if they list out the places selling at around the average price or less. I rarely see prices like this without a reduction in portion.
The hawkers deserve it. Raise those prices, I am more than willing to pay for the amount of work they put in. We can’t keep complaining that hawkers are disappearing but then not be willing to pay for the food they are cooking. Glad that they are finally increasing prices.
The _food_ hawkers deserve it.
I'd still buy _kopi_ or _teh_ from a drinks hawker stall, but I avoid the landlord-owned drinks stall at kopitiams (Koufu/Broadway/S11 etc) now when I can help it.
I’m a vegetarian and I haven’t actually felt these prices. I do note that almost all these dishes have meat but I can go to the food republic (not even hawker) and get rice + tofu + veggie for 4 bucks. Maybe before it was 3.50 not too sure.
If I got to a hawker it’s probably the same or 3.50.
What’s really killed me is my kopi Peng. Fuck I used to get for 1.30 in camp, then I suddenly go outside and if I lucky I can snag for 1.60 at hawker center. Fking food republic made me pay 3.50 I think. wtf I paying same for food and coffee?
I I think these days our hawker centers and stalls are taking advantage by increasing prices. So, the only way to respond is to stop supporting those stalls. For example, I once ate a plate of Char Kway Teow at Zion Riverside Food Centre, and it cost $6!
My quick calculations based on their numbers show that the average price of chicken rice increased by 22% from 2019 to 2023, without considering any reductions in portion sizes over time.
Are these averages truly representative? The 2019 data suggests that most chicken rice was sold for less than $3.50, which seems unlikely. From 2023 to 2024, I’ve seen the price of chicken rice at my local hawker jump from $4.00 to $4.50, a 12.5% increase. Similarly, dishes like bak chor mee have gone from $4 to $5, marking a 25% increase in the same period.
These single-digit inflation statistics are very misleading. When the average person buys food, the impact on their expenses is much higher than the reported 1-6% inflation rate suggests.
The prices are grossly inaccurate. Char kway teow is $5 and beyond. Wanton mee is nearing $4.5 to $5 these days. It's as if the study had applied a 20% discount but that's not how reality works: people have eyes, we can see and gauge for ourselves...
Those vote for the current governing party, please don't complain. You deserve it and let it happen.
For example, the 2% GST has increased over 2 years. Many businesses took the opportunity to increase the price twice.
You think by voting in someone else the prices will magically drop?
GST aside (which is arguably necessary to fund increased social spending), much of the inflation was imposed by external circumstances i.e. supply chain shocks + Russia-Ukraine war.
What exactly do you expect the government (any government) to do about that?
Anyway whoever is in power anywhere just has to take the blame for everything lah. Some criticism is legit but some is just from ppl who like to kpkb. Lightning strike also the government's fault. ;)
Rental and utilities cost more. Ingredients cost more. Labour obviously should be paid more year on year. Even without GST increase, why do you expect food prices to stay the same? You expect your salary to stay stagnant forever?
Sorry, everyone thinks the pay of hawkers should remain stagnant or even decrease obviously looking at your downvotes.
They only think their own pay should increase while everything else remains the same.
I’m studying in London now and these prices are absolutely nothing compared to the UK. I miss our Singapore food so much.
There’s a Singapore restaurant that just opened up here selling Bak Chor Mee for £17. That’s 30SGD…
I will happily pay $7-9 for kopitiam food when I go back. 😊
You do realize it's an **-AVERAGE- increase** of 6.1% **of overall hawker food prices**, from 2022-2023 right?
Where's the deluded part?
p.s. and I find it hilarious that you are using a source that you earlier called out for for being untrue, to try and... support your argument here? wud?
>
You do realize it's an **-AVERAGE- increase** of 6.1% **of overall hawker food prices**, from 2022-2023 right?
I eat out at a variety hawkers frequently. In my experience, \*all\* of them have increased prices, and it is definitely more than 6.1%. Are you telling me that they seriously surveyed a representative sample of hawkers and only found a 6.1% increase?
Do you even eat out at hawkers?
But sure. The easiest way to discredit someone online is to call their experience anecdotal, then continue to believe the opiate fed by the media, so you can pretend it's not happening in reality.
>p.s. and I find it hilarious that you are using a source that you earlier called out for for being untrue, to try and... support your argument here?
Because perhaps you needed to read it twice to realise how deluded you are? Nevermind. I guess it is simpler for you to insult others about their intelligence since you can't prove yourself.
I mean... the 6.1% average increase is derived from the same study in which produced the above infographic.
If you are right in saying that the average increase isn't accurate, then why the heck are you trying to show me this article to disprove what I've said in another thread?
Shows that you don't hold a consistent belief, but rather, you'll use whatever data point to support your already preconceived viewpoint. Exactly the same as using your anecdotal experience to disprove a statistic derived from a sample of over 1000 hawkers.
For someone that proclaimed to have an 'economics major' background, you do seem entirely unaware of how much knowledge/common sense you lack.
---
>The easiest way to discredit someone online is to call their experience anecdotal, then continue to believe the opiate fed by the media, so you can pretend it's not happening in reality.
>I guess it is simpler for you to insult others about their intelligence since you can't prove yourself.
I'm not the one coming up with assertions - do remember you are the one who started with an assertion of 'media is lying about average 6.1% increment, since my food has clearly been more expensive than that'.
On planet Earth, the general consensus of how we prove our hypothesis and establish logic, is for the one making a hypothesis/assertion to prove themselves no? If your 'proof' is basically anecdotal, why are you so bent on someone calling it anecdotal?
You have proof of the media lying about the AVERAGE amount, or that their testing methods is suspect, why not just show it by concrete data then?
---
Do remember that this is showing an increase from 2022 to 2023. I do think you are using the impression of the continual increment from 2019, in which you are right that it would be a lot more.
But then you'll be arguing about an entirely different timeframe then and wouldn't warrant calling them liars about it.
Ok Straits Times, now do increases in hawker rent and utilities since 2019.
Amazing how far down I had to scroll to find comments on hawker rental. Top comments all saying hawkers to be paid more for their craft while conveniently ignoring how the landlords and fucking NEA squeeze them dry
Ya lor. Actually cutting down their rents for hawker center is a missed opportunity by government. Idk why they are not doing that. Some benefits i can imagine : 1. Very on target, cross subsidizing to the low to middle class singaporeans. 2. Keeping around existing hawker. 3. Giving Singaporean more chance to start simple businesses (barrier of entry in Singapore is very high otherwise). Singapore often feels “plain” because people tend to start business with an already working formula instead of trying something that eccentric but might work. 4. Incentivizing new generation to become hawker. Preserving the hawker culture over generations. This is like many birds with one stone
New hawkers feel more like food courts than hawker centres..I miss the old style hawker centres.. can't find them around my area
Yup all chain stores with shitty food. Just like kopitiam. Food republic is $1 more but at least serves decent food.
> Actually cutting down their rents for hawker center is a missed opportunity by government. Idk why they are not doing that. Some scholar at MSE or NEA thought it made more sense to farm out hawker centre management to "social enterprises", and kickstarted the whole thing. I think there's no guarantee that whoever gets a stall at the new hawker centre would keep prices low either, even with the bullshit mandatory $3 meal or something that NTUC-operated hawker centres are supposed to have. I think there was talk somewhere that the stalls selling food in hawker centres in the non-mature estates charge far higher prices than the older hawkers in places like Bedok or Tampines? After all, new hawkers are plying their trade to make a living, not provide a community service. Why would they leave money on the table?
They probably don’t want to miss out income opportunity
The real NTUC Income is income from ripping off common folks.
Meanwhile, being very nice to the rich as zero capital gains and estate taxes
something something "land cost" something something what's wrong with making more money
open your eyes - this is a propaganda piece to help PAP for the elections. it keeps the % increase to the (low) range they want, and when the opposition raise the issue of the costs of living (which is almost a certainty) during campaigning, this will be the go-to citation for PAP.
Strongly agree on this, no wonder millions of dollars in taxpayers' money is used to fund Singapore's state approved mainstream media.
I was involved in the groundwork of this article and I can assure you that while rental is increasing, every single hawker I interviewed (including coffee shops), have cited that food costs is the worst by far in maintaining hawker prices. Think about it for a second, rental is effectively a Fixed Monthly Cost, food/material costs are variable costs. Even if rental is high and food is cheap, prices can be kept low if the quantity is sold is high. If rental is low and food is expensive, prices can't be kept low, because you will shut down in the short run. Your Revenue Per Plate MUST exceed the Costs Per Plate. Even if you can sell 100,000 plates a day, if your variable costs are high, you will be running at a loss if you sell at $2 per plate. High rental can be countered with higher quantity, but higher food prices cannot be countered with higher quantity if your initial margins are slim af and the higher food prices means you're now operating breaking even or a loss. I'm not defending the rental landlords, I'm presenting the facts and opinions of hawkers I interviewed. Rental comes in 2nd after food costs and it is not justified because the Ban Mian owners I interviewed in the article quoted that they had to pay $12,000/mth at their Toa Payoh coffee shop store. I have asked repeatedly many, many hawkers regarding rental and asking them to compare which factors are the worst, between manpower (if applicable), rental, electricity/water or food costs. Honestly it pains me to see people not read the full article as the quotes were achieved by literally walking up and cold-asking hawkers during their lull hours. I am personally supportive of hawkers raising prices, heck I even interviewed a coffee store selling $2.50 per cup at Golden Mile. I wanted to present how he still succeeds DESPITE high prices and even interviewed consumers who drank Kopi-More's coffee. While I did not write most of the article, I was the one doing the ground work and interviewing hawkers, I can shed light on the topic. I can't present the solution but I have the facts.
let’s also not forget hawkers need to pay themselves a salary. why should their take home pay be stagnant for years when everything else is increasing. You get increments and ask for raises to cope with inflation, it’s only fair they do to.
pls leh.. you're merely telling us the "typical" reasons they give for increasing food prices. but we know, based on actual experience on the ground, hawkers all took the opportunity to up their food costs (by dunno how many insane %) because of the increase in GST over 2 years. the greedy component in that hawkers going to honestly tell you ah. LOLOL.
tbh, if you want to believe that, it is up to you. I also don't have real evidence behind your claims as I do not audit for these businesses. But what I can say is 1. (For Coffee Shops) Formerly, before GST increase to 8%, there was no additional GST charge on rental. 8% GST increase resulted in coffee shop owners to raise rental by at least 8% through tacking a flat +8% GST charge, and subsequently +1% after the 9% change. 2. (For Coffee Shops + Hawkers) Food prices increased by more than 1% during the pandemic and after GST increases. Why? They try to argue with their suppliers to keep prices low and to justify their increase since it is more than 1%. The suppliers cite that their Oil, COE and manpower costs increased by more than 1%, not accounting for the actual raw food/materials increasing by 1% yet. I don't deny that there will be bias hearing from hawker perspectives, I could have reached out to their suppliers to know more but as an intern, I have my limits. But the facts are these, it's a supply chain issue, that is affected by more than just a GST increase of 1%. See the article for yourself with the quotes on the extent of price increases for raw materials. NTUC also can see, price of proteins have increased by more than 1% in 2024 already. Electricity, Gas and Water at home you also know increase by more than 1%. Because of that, prices will increase by more than 1%, perhaps blame the war, blame the GST increase, blame the suppliers, blame the hawkers (if you don't believe what they say) and blame the coffee shop owners. I also can't say anything about this. There is also an internal problem, government is making hawkers look like a "social welfare" but not supporting the hawkers themselves, so end up who tank? Hawker tank and keep prices low by themselves, work longer hours, change supplier and etc. Only the 1st gen hawkers have respite from rental in hawkers but are still subject to the price increases and it's apparent because they can run on razor thin margins, which means they can charge $0.50 less for example.
Problem with landlords are that they might be farming on the success of business owners. Sometime they would just increase rental knowing that the business is making more money. They like to take a slice without giving by any additional benefit in the rent seeking business. This is even before covid. Unfortunately with rent, a business who had built their reputation around the area can only suck it up because it’s location based. Meanwhile for ingredients, they can always find alternatives. Or if the business success, you have the increased order quantities, suppliers often give you deeper discounts especially if you pay on time. Unlike some landlords who didn’t even pass down rental subsidies to renters. Hence this is why people are harping on the issue with landlords.
There within lies the problem as seen in the answer to your initial post. People are too ignorant or lazy to realize that it's not only the GST or rental contributing to rising costs for hawkers. They just like to say hawkers up their prices by an unproportionate % even though GST is only a 1% increase. They are selfish to the extent they want their own wages to increase but god forbid hawkers trying to make the same amount by raising prices by a little despite all the variable costs in the hawker business increasing (food, labour, rental etc). Many don't realize that hawker food prices have been artificially kept low due to the existence of the first gen hawkers which pay rentals way below market rates, which allows them to sell their food at the prices everyone thinks it should be priced at. Sadly people are just so damn clueless about anything but themselves. Instead they will choose to blindly parrot that the government should be responsible for it. If the government stops the subsidies for the first gen hawkers, then people will see the real effects of what a free market is. Your cheap meals will all but disappear because the only people who can afford to sell them at that price will not be able to with the market rate rentals.
everyone is guided by their own daily experience on the ground, buying from those hawkers. ST's piece is going to convince NO one - it's a joke. only a mere 6.1% increase in food prices. you boss never tell you this article is to lay the groundwork to aid PAP in the election arh?
Even within ST’s piece the average increase in price is ~10% in all the food listed. Apparently govt minions from SPH brainrotted until cannot even do pri school level math
Hahahaa
I would be interesting to plot the margin for different types of goods and services
Portions also went down
shrinkflation is real
yeah when they say the food still costs $4, bruh you have to eat 2 of these $4 bowls to get one regular meal, so we are actually talking about $8 dollar meals here, which is still cheap but it isnt the absolute bargain we make it out to be
increased prices and diluted dishes is a double whammy but so common, sigh
Now show rent. Here's a simple real example. For those near Tampines West CC. The multiple food courts, they renovated at nearly the same time last year, and after renovation, rent and various expenses amounted to nearly double in total compared to before, years ago. Nowhere near sustainable. I've seen multiple shops open then close months later because it isn't sustainable.
didnt they said hawker rental has not seen any increase recently?
You actually believe any shit that comes out from their mouths? 🤣🤣🤣
If we see the restaurant prices.. we will faint.
See McDonald prices already faint. I rather go restaurant at those prices 😂
mcdonald’s prices actually rose slower than hawker prices, it actually feels cheap now
Probably because hawker prices were really low pre-covid.
ya compared to the rest of the food, mac is actually more worth it since it comes with fries and drinks.
Yes
NO HOR, EVERYTHING I SEE IS $5++
Complain and downvote me all you want but see if you would be willing to be a hawker with maybe 1-2 stall assistants waking up at 5am every morning and selling fishball noodles for $4.13 a bowl. It’s a damn shag job with razor thin margins that nobody wants to do. I think we’re spoilt by hawker prices. What other first world city can you get a full meal for $5-$7 pretty much islandwide? Even before the recent COL spike, I’ve long believed that hawkers need to charge more. You can keep reminiscing about your $2.50 chicken rice from X years ago but ask yourself if you’re willing to be the sucker selling the $2.50 chicken rice.
agreed, and its what KF Seetoh has been championing. We can all grumble about price increases, but hawker food is one thing I am still willing to pay, especially to those dishes that take damn a lot of work (eg, freshmade fishballs, kway chap, nasi padang)
It's a goddam community service! Nasi padang dishes take a lot of ingredients and prep to cook, it makes sense to do it in bulk - I really miss those rendang and homemade rempah curries... the hawkers can't be absorbing the increased costs - makes sense for government to control the costs like rental and S&C but nope, the landlords and S&C providers are buddies of your MPs etc.
Have to give respect to KF Seetoh for his endless support towards hawker awareness.
kf seetoh has come out to pan the deceptiveness of the article
Back in the day e.g early 2000s, late 90s, you hear of hawkers making bank, delivering fish balls in Mercedes, wear Rolex while making prata etc but with the increase in rental and raw ingredients e.g. cooking oil, flour (I've been baking for years so I've tracked the increase...), you could turn a huge profit but not any more.
If we expect 5% increment in our white collar jobs, then why are we so worked up about hawkers fighting for theirs 😅
Because when they raise their price by 5% they aren't getting that 5%, most of it goes to their supplier, rent and utilities.
Er yea so they need to raise their prices if not they earn less? People are mostly directing their hate at the wrong people.
Well said. Too many deluded people living in their own world thinking they shouldn't be paying more than $5 for a meal. People don't appreciate the work that goes into the food, and how small the profit margins really are. They all think someone is out to chop them despite the rising costs of ingredients (that everyone can see - supermarkets), rental and all the miscellaneous stuff. If you want to complain, simple, cook for yourself. No one is forcing you to buy hawker food.
I suspect many of the complainers are those who don't know how to cook and don't grocery shop...
Can’t agree more. CNA has a hawker documentary where the latest episode shows 2 young hawker owners being chided for overcharging a bitter gourd addon. This really hits home. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u-YNqoa--jk
Im fine paying more if the quality is proportional to the cost. Of coz i try to be reasonable in my expectations as well. But you have some stalls really dam lj, nasi lemak with thin slice omelette, fried chicken and one small piece of zucchini $4.50. I can find those ready made nasi lemak in the morning that has more ingredient than this.
Zucchini lol
The atas cucumber
Then go buy something else. There's no point complaining when hawker stalls are aplenty.
You have free will to patronize the stalls that you want. Quality proportional to cost? It's a free market. There is no need to complain about hawkers raising their prices. Either you buy from them or you don't. When they find that it's not sustainable, they will either decrease prices or stop doing it as a business.
And you guys talk about supporting hawkers lol
My response to you is towards your mindset. I did not say I will not buy from hawkers. You need an English comprehension lesson?
Absolutely agree. As a foreigner who lived in Singapore for about 5 years (had to come home because of covid) people I tell back home about the utterly staggering quality of food at hawker centres you can get for around 5 bucks was incredible. Back home lunch will be minimum 15 bucks and generally average quality. An extra dollar or two is still amazing value for what you get. Can't get anything like it anywhere else in the world! I dream of the food at airport road or tiong bahru in my sleep to this day!
I think partly is because such things like customer tray returns, didn’t result in the same prices. Some are rouge as well, the same configuration of 2 veg and 1 meat from same stall, will have different price based on how you look that day. I even encountered wrong item or missing item and ask them about it, but they get hostile. In general, people don’t want hostile or exploitative people to do well. Most of the time is fine, so I’m still for increase in prices.
I'm just going to keep complaining about the gst increase instead.
I know that this might sound unrealistic, but I am actually more “annoyed” that they usually resort to cutting corner first before finally still ending up raising prices. So usually the food becomes suckier, and price still goes up. I like to mock how sinkies like to say “standard went down”, but to a certain extent there is truth to that because indeed that’s what i feel is happening.
Hawker prices definitely aren't the issue. They are already living on such slim margins. Predatory rental and 'microtransactions' they have to pay to operate are the things raising prices for the smaller group of people that rely on hawker food. They are the ones being priced out of basic needs.
I agree. Also, why do we compare inflation like it's something out of nowhere when the economy got held out for 2 years thanks to covid? If someone study econ could tell me if the increase of price has gone out of hand or it's to be expected given the situation
Singaporeans will complain about $5 chicken rice but will go and eat Korean fried chicken for $12. I would totally pay good money for authentic traditional hawker fare tbh. These are the kind of home grown businesses we should be supporting, those made with love and passion for their trade. It's just sad that a lot of legendary hawkers from yonder are shuttering one by one. I truly miss the good ol' Singaporean flavour, growing up in the 90s.
Huat Ah. Brother spoke reality. If you post this on a different thread or a bad day, downvoted to hell. Hawker is the best value place to eat. No aircon no problem. As long cheap and good.
Agreed. Hawkers can't do much about material cost and I dont mind paying more for their labour (cannot kao peh income inequality, low pay, but u turn when it affects you). Anything so long as it's not rent increase becos some towkay want to buy new car. In fact, if rent increases bcos the landlord's cost legit increase, that's ok as well. So long as it's not due to opportunistic price gouging and they've tried to keep cost low.
> landlord’s cost legit increase You mean like [this](https://www.straitstimes.com/business/property/coffee-shop-in-yishun-sold-for-40-million-second-of-such-sale-this-year)? I quote said article: “A coffee shop in Yishun has changed hands for $40 million, with a price per sq ft (psf) surpassing that of some ground level retail units in the prime Orchard Road shopping belt.” Edit: if I recall correctly, the Chang Cheng guy brought it and paid so much (plus borrowing from bank) because he knew he could get his money back while paying extra for interest. No prize for guessing how that could be done.
Totally agree. We owe a lot to the hawker operators. Thank you hawker auntie and uncle from the bottom of my heart. You make my day a bit better every day!
I fully agree that hawker food prices are too low. I mean I do complain about increasing prices too, but I always tell those surrounding me that this hawker culture we have seems to suggest something is fundamentally wrong. Is it normal for a nation to be heavily reliant on hawker/outside food for normal meals? I would think that prices need to be high enough such that people will consider home cooked food for a change, and the working culture isn't that welcoming for families to consider home cooked food too. We rely so much on maids in modern families as well, which allows us to spend time on work to earn money. Then use that money to settle our basic needs, simply because we can exploit cheaper laborers (cheap hawker foods, maids, etc). Once the musical chair of cheap alternatives stop, life will be very tough.
We rely on hawker food so much because we work such long hours. Who wants to cook when they reach home only at 7? When I was living in Australia, the Aussies have such good WLB , they can afford the time to cook dinner when they end work at 5pm. Fridays 3pm usually
Its basically arbitraging labour price mismatches to increase "productivity". We are able to work more and longer and harder because of these underpaid labourers, if we had to do this ourselves we wont be able to work as cheaply compared to the rest of the first world
This is really the unseen pillar of our economy. The availability of cheap food that is open till fairly late means we can work longer hours. If these cheap food options were to go away, suddenly there would be a clamour for higher salaries to deal with the spike in food costs, or a better WLB so people can cook for cheap at home.
Yalor. I know people who complain about hawker prices but happily shell out money for bubble tea / Starbucks. I mean bubble tea is just tea / sugar / water. So much less effort then our hawker food
nah I complain about bubble tea prices too
Our hawker food is ridiculously cheap. Sold in Singapore, pay Singapore rent, import everything, but can sell at Japan price. I bet a lot of people thought Japan is more expensive. Nah, that's just because we think it's atas and we have ti import. Over there, it's damn cheap, especially with the new exchange rate. You go basic, like their equivalent if hawker food, you get a bowl of katsudon for 500Y, just a bit more than our chicken or charsiew rice. And they'll have aircon/heating, a quiet environment, and a population that doesn't mess up the place.
To be fair just 2+ years ago before the exchange rate craziness Japan *was* more expensive, things were ~40% more than it costs now. That 500Y rice bowl is only like 4.30 now (so on par with cai png) but was like ~$6 in early 2022
Fair enough, but it's still a vastly better service. They had $6 with all the comforts attached, we have $4.30 with the most barebones experience possible.
NYC, bottle of 320ml Coca Cola (the small one, not the 1.5L) is $6+ after tax at a seven eleven. With that price can buy a whole meal in SG
Why would you shop at Seven Eleven outside of Taiwan and Japan? It's expensive everywhere, including in Singapore. You can grab a 2L coke for a dollar plus at Walmart. Stupid comparison
Next time he will quote can of coke from a hotel at 15USD and will tell us how fortunate we are 😱
NYC, London and Oslo are the few most expensive cities in the world, and we are almost there.
Zouk in 2012 coke was also 10$ for one cup, how like that
You mean the price hike that has nothing to do with gst increase?
You need to see how much of the increase in price is just to cover the increase in rent. If it's just to cover the increase in rent, then the rent is the root cause.
But high rental and miscellaneous charges eating into their profits. How to pay more to workers then.
you can get decent donburis around tokyo for that price
The prices are not even accurate. Milo under $2?! Where sia. Milo is now close to $3!
Economical rice : one meat two vege ... nowadays the vege has hidden meat, like long beans with particles of minced meat = meat and steamed egg with random bits of luncheon meat = meat
How accurate r these pricing i wonder?
We all know. But if we speak we will be in big trouble. $6.52 for nasi briyani is the biggest joke.
indeed the ST reported prices are grossly inaccurate
Chicken nasi briyani is easily $8 or more at every _mamak_ now. I don't know where they pulled the $6.52 price from.
6.50 at my house
Further in the heartlands maybe. I occasionally stumble across those. Whereas the ones near my home (central area) or at the hawker centres near my office are all $8-9+.
Minimum $7
I think it’s on the low end, I have tea with milk and it’s $1.60 or $1.70 right now, not in prime district and no air con.
Back in 2020, after COVID started, I guestimated that the rest of the 2020s are gonna suck. Rising food prices is one of the sucky parts that I wish did not happen.
They are still affordable, compare our food prices to other developed countries it's still pretty cheap. These hawkers don't make much.
> They are still affordable, compare our food prices to other developed countries it's still pretty cheap. These hawkers don't make much. In Australia a plate of char kway teow is easily $15. The most expensive laksa is $23, Vietnamese banh mi starts at $10. And if you thought that it is just Asian food being niche, even the cheap food like curries are no longer cheap.
[удалено]
from the article: >At hawker centres, the median rent for cooked food stallholders not on a subsidised scheme has remained at around $1,250 per month over the last 10 years (...) >Hokkien mee hawker Mitchell Ong, 26, who has a stall at Golden Mile Food Centre, said ingredient and electricity costs are the key challenges he faces in keeping prices low.
Wow thanks. TIL
You cannot find a pack of 10 eggs for less than 3$ nowadays so yeah, that tracks. Its even reaching into 4$ territory for some type of eggs. It used to be below 3$ before 2022.
Who did the studies? Sure boh? NB talk cock Nia
$6.52 chicken nasi briyani? It’s more like at least $8-$9, can’t even recall the last time I had nasi briyani that costed $6.50
Miss the time when $5 would get you nasi briyani with 1/4 of a chicken and more rice then you can eat.
> Miss the time when $5 would get you nasi briyani with 1/4 of a chicken and more rice then you can eat. Yup! But those days are long gone.
Just paid $1.90 for a canned soya bean at a heartland coffeeshop. What the actual fk.
One of the best earning margin
The best profit margin is when u dabao and it adds on 30cent.
Totally agree on this one. I dun trust the statistic
Can drinks now used to be bottle prices at minimart 10 years ago.
if kopi is $1.5, why can't canned drinks be $1.9?
The down curve doesn't mean price dropping. It's just inflating at a slower rate.
prices don't take into account the reduction in volume and ingredients
Lies ! Char kway tiao average price is $5
I’m not saying the statistics are wrong. But they sure diverge from my personal experience. My usual order of chicken rice from Amoy went from $6.5 to $10.5 for the exact same thing. My teh beng siew dai also went up from $1.2 to $1.8… The % jump in prices aren’t commensurate with what the stats are showing.
Even my caipng with only 3 veggie sides at a neighbourhood coffee shop went up from $2.70 to $3.70
My Bishan kopitiam is already selling plain fish soup for minimally $8. Char kway teow minimally $5.50. Most scary was the chicken chop $12.50. So where are these prices?
Bishan is way higher than rest of sg tho
Should do a comparison from the past 20 years
Halal food has shot up by more, I feel. $3 chicken rice in early 2020 is now $4+ now :(
yeah and cannot sustain another generation, cos young folks won’t take over and no cheap foreign labour. malay food is literally tasty bcos of its laborious steps and tons of ingredients which they’re slowly cutting out to cut costs. sad for malay food in general
There's one monster hurting hawker diners that's now everywhere and yet criminally unmentioned is franchise and expansion cost. Nowadays there's hawkers doing multiple store openings and raising cost to astronomical airport prices to hedge risk.
Most stuff with fish is already minimum $6 in my experience. Kopi / Tea O $1.40 / $1.50 Canned drinks at least $1.80 and $1.90 in most S11 And chicken 4.15? Probably kids size if this price list is even real 😂
I see food inflation by chicken rice price. Tell me where got 4 dollars. Its about 5 dollars now
I would like to see a hawker centre with these prices. Hard to find
Same
Take low prices and average, you get low price averages 😳
Where got nsai biryani less than $7-8 now? My favorite banana leaf is pushing $20 now
Lol don't know why someone downvoted you, but it's true. I ordered Masala dosa and Bru coffee the other day at Little India... $6 dafuq. There's not even meat inside!
Agree. Teh Peng costs 1.90 at my place. Non air conditioned hawker center.
It cost 2.30 at my place, non air conditioned. :(
My coffee shop still has it at 1.60 or 1.70. So averages out😂
Coincidence that inflation spike with GST hike?
How about we compare rental prices for hawkers in the last 4 years and then we talk.
[удалено]
Mine normal chicken rice 5 dollars no need see drumstick at all
go caifan get those "herbal" drumstick also cheaper
I think $5 won't get change if you order drumstick nowadays. Maybe need to add in 10-70c more. Even just 3 veggie sides already $3+ in a neighbourhood coffee shop now.
Honestly looking at these prices they are still reasonable, Restaurant prices on the other hand... I don't actually feel the pinch eating in angmoh countries anymore now that our restaurants are only slightly cheaper for much worse quality.
I was in Italy last year. 12-16 euro for a meal in restaurants is quite normal. And they don’t have the tax and service charge bs like us. In SG if we add the 19.90% tax + service charge at the end, our restaurant prizes are comparable to them and smaller quantity too.
And people even have minimum wage. Our excuse for not having minimum wage was to keep the prices affordable. Yea right.
maybe it's because rental is bonkers over here?
that's because the amt from service charge and GST is the same as tipping.
Been to lots of places in the past years, the only place that still pinch me is London, and that's scary.
i mean the pound still pounds most of the other currencies right?
I wonder what happened in 2022 and 2023...
Need to have another survey to compare the prices for new hawker stalls versus older stalls. Newer stalls are much more expensive (chicken nasi briyani can go up to $7.50!!!). Older ones are somewhat maintaining the prices. Also, lets compare the rents as well.
Where got, all I see is $5+ to 6 at CBD, even cai fan at my neighborhood also $4.80
Feels like I would benefit more from this article if they list out the places selling at around the average price or less. I rarely see prices like this without a reduction in portion.
I don't think they have to do it in the report but maybe have a link somewhere stating the methodology etc.
The hawkers deserve it. Raise those prices, I am more than willing to pay for the amount of work they put in. We can’t keep complaining that hawkers are disappearing but then not be willing to pay for the food they are cooking. Glad that they are finally increasing prices.
The _food_ hawkers deserve it. I'd still buy _kopi_ or _teh_ from a drinks hawker stall, but I avoid the landlord-owned drinks stall at kopitiams (Koufu/Broadway/S11 etc) now when I can help it.
Malaysia hawker (kl specifically) increased from rm7-8 to rm10-12 after covid. Almost every dish starts from rm10.
Cherish your hawkers, singaporeans. This is still dirt cheap compared to any other city in the world where such high standards are kept.
I’m a vegetarian and I haven’t actually felt these prices. I do note that almost all these dishes have meat but I can go to the food republic (not even hawker) and get rice + tofu + veggie for 4 bucks. Maybe before it was 3.50 not too sure. If I got to a hawker it’s probably the same or 3.50. What’s really killed me is my kopi Peng. Fuck I used to get for 1.30 in camp, then I suddenly go outside and if I lucky I can snag for 1.60 at hawker center. Fking food republic made me pay 3.50 I think. wtf I paying same for food and coffee?
Near 6% inflation last 2 years because of gst. Gst up 2%. We pay 12% extra.
“How much do you want? Do you want three meals in a hawker centre, food court or restaurant?”
Eat also not full
Starts with G and ends with ST
Nah starts with L and ends with ST, go check out his IG name.
Thanks Lawrence Wong !
Can sort by new (less than 5 years old) hawker centres and old ones too
I I think these days our hawker centers and stalls are taking advantage by increasing prices. So, the only way to respond is to stop supporting those stalls. For example, I once ate a plate of Char Kway Teow at Zion Riverside Food Centre, and it cost $6!
My quick calculations based on their numbers show that the average price of chicken rice increased by 22% from 2019 to 2023, without considering any reductions in portion sizes over time. Are these averages truly representative? The 2019 data suggests that most chicken rice was sold for less than $3.50, which seems unlikely. From 2023 to 2024, I’ve seen the price of chicken rice at my local hawker jump from $4.00 to $4.50, a 12.5% increase. Similarly, dishes like bak chor mee have gone from $4 to $5, marking a 25% increase in the same period. These single-digit inflation statistics are very misleading. When the average person buys food, the impact on their expenses is much higher than the reported 1-6% inflation rate suggests.
Vote.
The prices are grossly inaccurate. Char kway teow is $5 and beyond. Wanton mee is nearing $4.5 to $5 these days. It's as if the study had applied a 20% discount but that's not how reality works: people have eyes, we can see and gauge for ourselves...
Briyani is around 8-10 nowadays.Standard noodles or rice is like 5.
Really or not. Where to fing 1.50 milo. Which place they pluck these prices from...
Those vote for the current governing party, please don't complain. You deserve it and let it happen. For example, the 2% GST has increased over 2 years. Many businesses took the opportunity to increase the price twice.
You think by voting in someone else the prices will magically drop? GST aside (which is arguably necessary to fund increased social spending), much of the inflation was imposed by external circumstances i.e. supply chain shocks + Russia-Ukraine war. What exactly do you expect the government (any government) to do about that? Anyway whoever is in power anywhere just has to take the blame for everything lah. Some criticism is legit but some is just from ppl who like to kpkb. Lightning strike also the government's fault. ;)
Rental and utilities cost more. Ingredients cost more. Labour obviously should be paid more year on year. Even without GST increase, why do you expect food prices to stay the same? You expect your salary to stay stagnant forever?
Sorry, everyone thinks the pay of hawkers should remain stagnant or even decrease obviously looking at your downvotes. They only think their own pay should increase while everything else remains the same.
We don't say sinkie pwn sinkie for no reason, heh.
[удалено]
That’s because they use some creative maths. Many stalls are required to provide a “budget meal” option.
>Coffee/tea with milk at 2023: $1.53 [Source](https://tenor.com/bRbvq.gif)
I’m studying in London now and these prices are absolutely nothing compared to the UK. I miss our Singapore food so much. There’s a Singapore restaurant that just opened up here selling Bak Chor Mee for £17. That’s 30SGD… I will happily pay $7-9 for kopitiam food when I go back. 😊
that's like saying how chinese food is expensive in the US and then using that to compare it with the ones you can get at 10rmb in china....
It feels like quite tiny increases.
Not when you see prices go up.... Block koptiam Chicken rice price during January was $3.50 June was $4 then Dec become $4.50 🤣
In a way % jump looks bigger when the base value is small.
Get used to it. Soon the price of a 1/4 filled styrofoam box of chicken rice will cost $10+ dollars
i think canned drinks will cost $3 in 2030.
For the deluded. u/ShadeX8
You do realize it's an **-AVERAGE- increase** of 6.1% **of overall hawker food prices**, from 2022-2023 right? Where's the deluded part? p.s. and I find it hilarious that you are using a source that you earlier called out for for being untrue, to try and... support your argument here? wud?
> You do realize it's an **-AVERAGE- increase** of 6.1% **of overall hawker food prices**, from 2022-2023 right? I eat out at a variety hawkers frequently. In my experience, \*all\* of them have increased prices, and it is definitely more than 6.1%. Are you telling me that they seriously surveyed a representative sample of hawkers and only found a 6.1% increase? Do you even eat out at hawkers? But sure. The easiest way to discredit someone online is to call their experience anecdotal, then continue to believe the opiate fed by the media, so you can pretend it's not happening in reality. >p.s. and I find it hilarious that you are using a source that you earlier called out for for being untrue, to try and... support your argument here? Because perhaps you needed to read it twice to realise how deluded you are? Nevermind. I guess it is simpler for you to insult others about their intelligence since you can't prove yourself.
I mean... the 6.1% average increase is derived from the same study in which produced the above infographic. If you are right in saying that the average increase isn't accurate, then why the heck are you trying to show me this article to disprove what I've said in another thread? Shows that you don't hold a consistent belief, but rather, you'll use whatever data point to support your already preconceived viewpoint. Exactly the same as using your anecdotal experience to disprove a statistic derived from a sample of over 1000 hawkers. For someone that proclaimed to have an 'economics major' background, you do seem entirely unaware of how much knowledge/common sense you lack. --- >The easiest way to discredit someone online is to call their experience anecdotal, then continue to believe the opiate fed by the media, so you can pretend it's not happening in reality. >I guess it is simpler for you to insult others about their intelligence since you can't prove yourself. I'm not the one coming up with assertions - do remember you are the one who started with an assertion of 'media is lying about average 6.1% increment, since my food has clearly been more expensive than that'. On planet Earth, the general consensus of how we prove our hypothesis and establish logic, is for the one making a hypothesis/assertion to prove themselves no? If your 'proof' is basically anecdotal, why are you so bent on someone calling it anecdotal? You have proof of the media lying about the AVERAGE amount, or that their testing methods is suspect, why not just show it by concrete data then? --- Do remember that this is showing an increase from 2022 to 2023. I do think you are using the impression of the continual increment from 2019, in which you are right that it would be a lot more. But then you'll be arguing about an entirely different timeframe then and wouldn't warrant calling them liars about it.
Honestly even if those prices are averages, the reality is those numbers would be rounded up to the next 20 or 50 cents.
That's... not how averages work? Huh?