I Might Not Open My Hawker Stall

I asked hawkers to try our food and advice on running a hawker/f&b business. Should I even start it in the first place?
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Thanks to the hawkers!

Chapters
00:00 hawkers try my udon
00:28 north region
06:34 west region
10:15 central region
11:27 eat region
15:48 why Ben Yeo says "don't do it"

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#Singapore

[mualup]

Why don’t you try home dining. You don’t have to slog, headache over workers and low downside risk. Limited number of guest per session. Curated menu. You can try new recipes etc. You can include your specialty sakes as well. Also, with a small group, you get the chance to meet your viewers, chat with them, gather feedback and new ideas for your videos.

[pathfinder]

Your food looks oishii but can you cook fast, achieve consistency and handle the huge crowd if you open in hawker? If not, it is better to go for cafe concept. Resturant is too expensive to start as first venture.

[stever]

😂😂😋 These videos are like an advert to visit Singapore and just travel the hawker centres. All so amazing to me (From the UK)

[zsr]

Do what floats your boat, we are your supporters 👌🏻

[MrLolxu]

I saw this video late and I too share Ben's advice. At this age, don't be a hawker if you're not up to it.

1) You're using premium ingredients and that alone isn't cheap. With the prices of materials in Singapore and almost everything from meat to vegetables has to be imported, it's increasing your output costs more than your input so if you do not have a backup savings, you're doomed and that's why, in fact, up to 60% of new hawkers never survive for more than 1 year.
2) Rental. This is a real kicker as most rentals in hawker stalls at actual hawker centers are by government bidding tender system so the higher you bid for a vacant stall, the stall goes to you but here's the problem... The higher you bid for the monthly rent, the more you suffer and it's all Russian Roulette situation. You can get the stall at $500 per month if you're lucky OR at worst, $4000-5000 per month. If you're opening a restaurant, that's even worse as the rental would definitely be 10k and above and that doesn't include your electricity bills and miscellaneous hidden costs and all these routes back to point one. If you have zero cash backups, don't be a hawker.
3) Customers. Singaporean customers can be a bitch at times as they want cheap and good. If you're going back to point one and using everything premium, you'll definitely have to charge 2.5-3x the cost price to make a profit and by then, it's not cheap. Sure.. When it's new, you get the novelty of it being new but in the long run, it's crippling you as its not cheap to eat a bowl of udon at 18 bucks all the time in a hawker. Restaurant works but link back to point 2 and 1, you'll see the issue. Also, Singaporeans like to kao peh kao bu about EVERY single thing so you must either be quirky enough to attack them back with passive aggressive behaviors or just angkat it up and keep quiet or else you'll also fail.
4) Consistency is key. Even if you hire people to cook, the consistency must be there and that's a problem many people face. They employ someone, teach them how to cook and initially, all goes well but as time goes by, standards slip and it keeps slipping to the point that they went bankrupt so be very careful of that point. You have to supervise and ensure that things go its way smoothly 100% of the time the stall is open and you have to commit to it.. ALOT.

Being a hawker in Singapore is just not easy. Be careful if you're really committing into it and if you're still going with it, I wish you good luck and break the market with your special udon Ghib. ご多幸をお祈り申し上げます

[kateryan]

I wouldn't spend over $10 on hawker food personally—I'd rather enjoy it in the comfort of a nice, air-conditioned restaurant. A price point of $6-8 feels more reasonable, especially since Japanese noodles are already seen as a premium in Singapore. What I think is missing to keep customers coming back to hawker stalls is something like weekday promotions on different menu items, similar to what Subway and McDonald's $5 menu used to do. It could be an interesting concept to try in a hawker setting.

[FSRain.MooMoo]

I really think that you could keep your menu simple first and ensure you earn enough profits to sustain then as you have sufficient funding & manpower then consider restaurant. They are very right about the passion & commitment as f&b is tough. Excited for you Ghib! All the best too!

[TechTagged]

$10 for hawker food is too much. Better to open a restaurant and charge accordingly.

[lissalow]

The choice of which hawker centre matters. If Holland Village, Newton or East Coast, people are willing to spend more there.

[conradchong]

Go for the boutique food experience - Have a booking system where a group of 5 to 10 people make an appointment to come to your place or a designated place to eat your food!! Your food looks good, but you cannot find your price point in the hawker setting to make it economically viable. For a cafe/restaurant, you will lose money even before business with high overheads!!! Just my two csnts!!!

[jasmineteo]

Don't be a hawker. There are too many hawkers already.
Start a homecooked food and takeaway and delivery business instead. No need to pay rent, so can sell cheaper.
Good luck!

[gabrielvideo]

i think your biggest challenge is can you maintain the same quality when you have 100s of customers daily. Now you cook a few bowl, very easy maintain standard but when you have to serve fast and also serve hundreds, that is a different problem.

[ongdavid]

My views are, you need to count the operating cost and how much you want to get? Take into considerations how many bowls you need to sell to break even. How many days you open per month? How fast can you dish out 1 bowl? Considering the peak and non peak hours. Are you able to keep consistency, quality, and speed to satisfy the crowd during peak hours?

[simonialei]

So excited for your next steps! Please let us know the date and location of your pop-up. would love to come by and try your delicious food!

[zenalias]

You have asked that golden question - How do I keep the traction ?
Brainstorm on that, maybe do more interviews on existing old timers in the hawker scene to understand their struggle on keeping the business running. We all know local hawker scene is 1) unforgiving weird/long hours and 2)cutthroat brutal with high turnovers *too many hawkers shutting with less than 2 years of operations

Price point above 10 is pushing it already as a hawker food, but who knows, we're slowly getting used to a meal going for 5+ when it used to be 3+

[ronaldtan]

I cant wait to try your food!My Japanese frens asked me to take a picture with you.Some of them watch your channel too!

[hilaryho]

This would be great as a frozen delivery pack. You won't have problems with rent because you can just deliver from a low cost location.

A reason you'd want a physical location is for the footfall marketing, but your videos are your own footfall marketing anyway. Plus, the amount you'd spend on rent can be used to promote through UGC.

I would LOVE to get these frozen and then prepared for parties.

[Nick]

if u invite zermatt neo u can definitely experiment cooking in large quantity 😏🤣

[juliettechai]

Agree with the Home Dining (for a start) too.
Cook only upon demand instead of waiting for customers at hawker/restaurant/cafe. Home dining also a good time to focus on fine tuning the menu according to customer’s taste. Starting a brick & mortar meaning your energy is diluted to managing the staff, the store etc etc instead of the food.

[bruhthisnonsensicalhuman]

Looking forward to it! Hope the portion is satisfying, if you dont mind you may even have different price points for different portion servings Small / Medium / Large for those who have bigger or lesser appetite.