Popular hawker brands dominate new centres, raising concerns about diversity

Walk into any of Singapore's newer hawker centres and you will notice the same things: high ceilings, industrial fans, and in the corner, a stall bearing a name you have seen before. Munchi Pancakes appears in 11 of the 16 socially conscious enterprise hawker centres built after 2015. Eng Kee Chicken Wings operates 12 outlets. Tong Fong Fatt Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice runs more than 15 stalls. These are not anomalies. They are the shape of the hawker landscape now, and they raise a question that food critics and policymakers are beginning to ask: What happens to a food culture when the same names keep appearing everywhere?

The regulatory framework was supposed to prevent this. The National Environment Agency limits each individual to a maximum of two cooked food stalls across all hawker centre types. Yet somehow, popular brands have built sprawling operations. The answer lies in a loophole that is technically legal but philosophically troubling: they register stalls under family members' names. A husband and wife can each hold two stalls. A son can hold two more. The rule remains intact on paper while the spirit of it dissolves in practice.

Kumiko Tan, founder of Hakka Leipopo, arrived at her first stall in Bukit Merah in December 2021 after three failed bids. She and her husband, Khoo Hao Ting, had started making thunder tea rice to recapture a childhood taste from Johor Bahru. The initial location disappointed—seniors preferred stronger flavours like char kway teow—but younger diners embraced the dish. When One Punggol Hawker Centre opened, Tan applied without knowing what the operators wanted. She was invited to a taste test and won a stall. Now Hakka Leipopo operates five locations across Singapore, four in hawker centres registered under her and her husband's names, plus one in a Plaza Singapura foodcourt. She is deliberate about expansion, settling into each new location before moving to the next, driven by a desire to show younger Singaporeans that Hakka tradition is not just for the elderly. "If we don't attract younger customers, this tradition might die out," she says.

Derek Cheong, the 29-year-old MasterChef Singapore winner behind Berempah Bros, chose his locations with similar care. Bukit Canberra Hawker Centre appealed to him because it had strong marketing and lacked a signature offering. Woodleigh Village attracted him for its young population. The economics are straightforward: a hawker stall costs about $25,000 to open, while a restaurant requires $200,000 to $500,000. Hawker centres also sit near MRT stations, making them accessible to ordinary people. But Cheong conducts random quality checks at his outlets weekly, acutely aware that rapid expansion can erode the very thing that made the brand worth expanding. "Food is subjective," he says, "but as a general guideline, if the food gets tastier, I consider it a good job."

The Eng Kee Chicken Wings family runs what they call a tight ship. Nicholas Lim, a 28-year-old who now operates a stall at Buangkok Hawker Centre, spent a month learning how to marinate the brand's famous wings under his uncle's instruction before being allowed to contribute to daily operations. "Our biggest challenge is maintaining consistency and quality across the outlets," he says. The brand started growing around 2022 after opening its fourth outlet, when family members finally provided enough labour to expand at full speed. They have since experimented with cafes but remain committed to opening more hawker stalls, bringing what Lim calls an old-school style of cooking to neighbourhoods.

The NEA acknowledges that hawkers use family members to circumvent the two-stall rule, and it permits this as long as relatives personally operate their stalls. The agency does not restrict franchising or limit how many stalls a brand may operate, provided registered stallholders meet tenancy requirements by personally running their businesses. Yet one prominent brand withdrew from an interview with The Straits Times when the conversation turned to the mechanics of its expansion, declining to create "the impression that we have a backdoor to these things." That hesitation speaks volumes. Derek Cheong is blunt: securing another stall is "100 per cent" easier once you have already set up shop in a hawker centre run by the same operator. "The more people you know, the more doors you'll open," says his business partner Ong Zhen Ning. Operators confirm that established brands with proven track records have a competitive advantage, though they insist all applicants receive fair consideration. Eng Kee Chicken Wings applied unsuccessfully for a stall at Punggol Coast Hawker Centre despite operating at Anchorvale Village Hawker Centre, also run by FairPrice Group. King Grouper Fish Soup, with over 30 outlets, similarly lost out at Punggol Coast. Jennifer Chew, head of operations, wonders if the operator feared the brand would appear to monopolise the area.

The data reveals the extent of the overlap. Across seven FairPrice-run socially conscious enterprise hawker centres, between 21 and 38 per cent of stalls are repeat brands found in other centres. At three of four Fei Siong-run centres, the recurrence rate exceeds 33 per cent. Ci Yuan Hawker Centre is the outlier, sharing only about 11 per cent of brands with other Fei Siong centres. By comparison, NEA-run hawker centres show lower overlap rates: Golden Mile Food Centre at 15.7 per cent, Chomp Chomp at 18.5 per cent, ABC Brickworks at 16 per cent. K.F. Seetoh, the veteran food critic and Makansutra founder, can name six to eight brands he keeps seeing everywhere. "I can easily name you six to eight brands that I keep seeing around, off the top of my head," he says. The ubiquity troubles him. "Seeing the same thing over and over again doesn't move the symphony of our hawker stalls," he observes. "New hawkers with unconventional ideas might fear opening a stall because they might think they can't survive with their type of food, and this stems evolution."

Expansion, however, carries real risk. Tommy Pang, 29, built Shi Nian Pig Leg Rice and Bai Nian Yong Tau Foo into chains with over 30 outlets islandwide in under a year at their 2021 peak. Then the crash came. After losing half a million dollars in six months, he shut nearly 20 outlets in quick succession. The problem was premature expansion without system or strategy. Multiple stalls operated in the same GrabFood delivery radius, cannibalising each other. Franchisees lacked his personal investment. "They didn't put in the same amount of effort as I did because their main goal was to get a return on their investment, whereas for me, this brand is my baby," he says. Now he relies on family and friends to run his remaining outlets and is exploring new concepts like Dudu Cantonese Cuisine. The question beneath all of this, as researcher Jenny Dorsey points out, is fundamental: What are hawker centres supposed to be? Timeless bastions of Singapore's culinary heritage, or low-barrier incubators for aspiring entrepreneurs? The two-stall rule suggests the former, yet the franchise model technically complies with regulations while violating their spirit. Some operators are trying to thread this needle. Fei Siong allocates subsidised stalls to young hawkers serving heritage dishes, pairing them with mentorship and marketing support. Canopy Hawkers Group assists first-timers with regulatory applications. Seetoh proposes an academy to teach hawkers different business models, from single outlets to chains of 20. The conversation is not about stopping successful hawkers from succeeding. It is about making room for both new and established players, and deciding what kind of food culture Singapore wants to preserve.