Recently, I visited a shop selling biscuits in an HDB estate to buy my favorite ice gem biscuits and my mom’s favorite “ear biscuits” to snack at home during the Circuit Breaker.  When the aunties were packing my orders, I cheekily asked for a discount, only to be told that business has been bad lately as more people opt for online delivery from supermarkets during the Circuit Breaker.  They also commented that I was lucky that the prices of the goodies were not increased.  I left the shop feeling embarrassed and concerned for the many other small businesses in Singapore which could be experiencing bad income in this pandemic.

Small businesses like the mama shop and hawker centre stalls in Singapore have been hit hard in this pandemic.  Some hawkers have even seen a two third drop in business during this Circuit Breaker.  This is worrying as many of these hawkers are sole breadwinners for their family.  While this pandemic may have disrupted these small businesses’ income, there is help available.  Through the Resilience Budget by the government, small businesses enjoy short-term rental waiver and tax payment will also be deferred.  In addition, there has been several ground-up initiatives to help hawkers.  Some of the examples include Hawkers United - Dabao 2020 – a Facebook group created by a hawker, Melvin Chew.  It connects hawkers and customers directly to arrange for takeaway orders.  Another example is BySGForSG, a non-profit food delivery platform, offering hawkers an opportunity to join with no onboarding fees and low commissions. These offer great help to hawkers who are not tech savvy enough to engage the services of conventional delivery on mobile apps or afford  the high commission of a delivery service.  These initiatives ensure that the hawkers can retain their profits, by charging a low to no commission, and at the same time, promote these hawker stalls to Singaporeans.

I have been making a conscious effort to buy food only from these platforms ever since knowing about these initiatives to help the hawker stall owners.  Every order we make can help them stay afloat in such times of crisis.

Ref:
Coronavirus eats into Singapore's already struggling hawker trade (AL JAZEERA NEWS 5May2020).

Non-profit food delivery platform helps hawkers to go online (Straits Times 1Jun2020)

COVID-19: Here’s how you can support your favourite Singapore hawker stalls (CNA 22Apr2020)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of St. John's Home for Elderly Persons.