SINGAPORE HAWKER CULTURE
would pay the $8 delivery fee to buy muffins. But Lim convinced her. “I explained that maybe people buying other food items from the hawker center will add a muffin or two from you,” he says. “At the end of the first couple of months, she became one of our top sales.”
Keeping their heads above water While Lim took care of recruiting the hawkers and teaching them to install WhatsApp on their phones, Tai took care of the technology. “I created the website using Shopify because we needed to create something using the least number of resources and in the shortest possible time,” he says. “We use Shopify to collect the orders. From there I export the orders to Excel then I run some scripts to speed up the relevant orders to the respective hawkers. Instead of sending a complex spreadsheet, each hawker receives an image file on WhatsApp where they can see the orders needed for the next day.” Lim and Tai did this on top of their
day jobs. Their intention was to do it for a month or so during the initial circuit breaker, but they continued until December 2020. They worked with over 140 hawkers, knowing each one by name and sight. Hawker Heroes did not earn money, in fact, it lost a couple of thousand dollars. However, they are happy to have helped vendors keep their heads above water and prepare them for digitalization. Another person who stepped up to
help is Melvin Chew who started Hawkers United, a Facebook group with 25,000 members signed up when it started in April 2020. Today, it has over 300,000 members. Chew is a second-generation owner of Jin Ji Teochew Braised Duck & Kway Chap, his family’s 38-year-old stall at Chinatown Complex Food Centre. He has become the unofficial spokesperson of hawkers. Chew’s Facebook group allows hawkers to share and post their offerings, allowing
Opposite page: Each stall specializes in one dish. Right: Only vaccinated people can now meet in groups of two
For more go to
fcsi.org 99
those without a website or social media presence to ‘speak’ to their potential customers. Chew points out that while the push towards digitalization can help stall owners, it is not that simple. There are some older hawkers who cannot read or write. But throughout this pandemic Chew says a community has grown. “Hawkers are united together, helping each other survive this difficult time,” he says.
Deeper appreciation of hawker culture Singapore has reached over 80% on double vaccinations and since October 2021, only fully vaccinated customers are allowed to dine in groups of two at coffee shops and canteens. Unvaccinated people can enter only to buy food for takeaway. Government agencies are working to provide stallholders across the country with support to get them online with access to food delivery platforms. Digital support groups will be set up with plans for a Facebook page for each hawker centre, facilitating group buys through social media, as well as a digital ambassador assigned to each hawker center. There are also plans to pilot a common acquirer model consolidating orders from Food Panda, Grab and Deliveroo customers,
Government agencies are working to provide stallholders across the country with support to get them online with access to food delivery platforms
managed by WhyQ. This is set to kick off by year-end with 14 participating hawker centres. The intention is that hawkers do not incur any additional commission fees. While digitalization is important,
Hawker Heroes and Hawkers United prove hawkers don’t need to be tech savvy. Learning how to use WhatsApp or Facebook can be sufficient to reach their customers. But it will take a village of younger Singaporeans to gently hold their hands while they adopt new modern systems. It will take much more than digitalization to save hawker culture. A much deeper appreciation of hawker culture is needed for it to not just survive the pandemic, but also thrive and flourish in the years to come.
ASIA PAC
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