High rent and poor maintenance make it impossible to serve quality food in hawker sta

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

HIGH RENT AND POOR MAINTENANCE MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SERVE QUALITY FOOD IN HAWKER STALLS

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21 Aug 2014 - 9:31pm








Dear TRS,
I am a local hawker stall owner and I want to share with you something I have noticed which explains why we seldom see quality food in our hawker centres.

I started out wanting to sell nice authentic Thai food in Kopitiam but because of Kopitiam's profiteering system and greed, I ended up having to change my menu to cheap, common things like Yong Tau Foo.

The main problem is the high rentals charged by hawker centre operators like Kopitiam which causes us hawker stalls to have to cut costs elsewhere just to survive.

I have made a comparison of the average rentals from various food court operators and found that most of the basic rentals are similar.

However, at Kopitiam, they have a new system where they give consumers 10% discounts if they use the Kopitiam cashless cards. The biggest problem with this is that the 10% discount is actually borne by us hawkers and not Kopitiam.

We already have difficulty operating in local food courts because of high rentals and labour costs.

We are also not like big hawker stall chains like Chang Cheng economy rice, yu ki duck rice, qui lian pan mian who are able to enjoy economies of scale.

If you aren't like these chains, you have to settle for low cost foods like char kway teow, minced meat noodles and wan ton noodles.

That's why there are so many of these cheaper food stalls everywhere and you can't find nicer quality food in our local food centres.

To make matters worse for us small hawker stall owners, we don't even get good maintenance despite paying such high rentals (Many hawker centre operators work by taking 23% of your gross turn over on top of the base rental).







For example, Kopitiam at Kang Kar Mall has been operating with a spoilt aircon unit for over 2 months already despite the numerous complaints from the tenants.

There are also several days a week when there are no lights at the outdoor tables. Despite regular feedback, they continue to ignore the problems.

Rats are also another issue in this food court as well. They are all hidden in the aircon vent chewing on our electrical wires causing some of our wiring to be damaged. Then, we have to pay for our own repair after that.

When we are faced with this type of large costs too, it is impossible not to cut costs by using cheaper ingredients and selling cheaper food.

It is really a disgrace how big companies like Kopitiam are bullying hawker stall owners and ignoring their feedback despite collecting such high rentals and undoubtedly making huge profits.

Local Hawker
TRS Contributor


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