AGEING HAWKERS AND ECONOMIC Boundaries
This glaring decrease appears to be indicative of the complex problems that plague the entire stalls trade.
With prices and rental prices, hawkers are finding it extremely difficult to operate their firms at the rates, let alone specifications, that Singaporeans expect. After raising prices by S$ 1, one hawker reported a 30 % drop in sales.  ,
Some peddlers are working to solve this issue by constructing chains around their counters. Li Xin Teochew Fishball Noodles, for example, started as a rickshaw stall around 1968. Nowadays, there are 18 stores across Singapore.
There are also trade-offs when expanding the business, such as employing economies of scale to lower prices.
Sean Kee Duck Rice’s Albert Sng, a second-generation stalls, shared in a 2023 meeting that his stall’s favorite chili seasoning only demands frying 100kg of peppers for up to five hours.  ,
He said,” I’ll get the family recipe and dump it,” expressing concerns that strangers or franchise associates might cut corners and make a style compromise. People have already made me numerous offers to buy the barn and brand it. But I do n’t want to”.
Hawkers can instruct partners and hired hands on how to prepare their dishes, but they ca n’t instruct them on how to care.  ,
The median age of hawkers is 60, according to the National Environment Agency ( NEA ). This number is alarming in two ways: first, it indicates how unhappy the stalls industry is among younger Singaporeans, and second, it indicates how unpopular it is.  ,
Only seven former peddlers have enrolled in the Hawkers Succession Scheme since its release in 2022, which has limited success seen for NEA’s efforts to address this issue. For perspective, in 2023, there were nearly 13, 430 licensed stalls stalls in Singapore.  ,
Of these seven, just two have been matched with young descendants. Handing over one’s heart is a difficult choice for experienced buskers. According to Cornelius Tan, president of the Chinatown Complex Hawker Association, it’s frequently” not about the money” whether the applicant is qualified to “let the reputation continue” or no.  ,
Yet hawkers who have children or younger relatives who are willing to succeed them confront their own set of challenges, such as imparting nebulous cooking skills that have developed into muscle memory over the course of years. It risks compromising the brand’s culinary standards and customer confidence in the brand because it is n’t as simple as handing someone a written recipe or writing a standard operating procedure.  ,