From Street to Table

Food hawkers have been part of Singapore's landscape since its days as a port city. They used a variety of packaging, depending on the dishes sold. Materials extracted from nature, such as opeh and banana leaves, were used alongside porcelain crockery that were modelled after the ones in China, where the majority of immigrants in Singapore came from. The crockery was often painted with motifs such as flowers and roosters, designs that were used across Southeast Asia too.

While hawkers plied the city streets and brought about colourful sights and sounds, they also caused much concern for the authorities. Those selling food had no easy access to water or proper disposal facilities and posed a threat to public health and hygiene. They also obstructed traffic and attracted exploitation by secret societies.

As a result, the British colonial government launched various initiatives to counter the “evils of hawking”—as described in a 1931 government report. They included licensing hawkers to restrict where and when they could operate, and later, building dedicated shelters for them. Such efforts were accelerated after Singapore gained independence in 1965 and sought to become a modern nation.

Along with a nation-wide drive to resettle tens of thousands of street hawkers into government-built hawker centres, the 1973 Environmental Public Health (Food Handlers) Regulations were introduced to raise food hygiene standards. Some examples include restricting food handlers from preparing food with their bare hands or blowing open bags with their breath.

They could also no longer use chipped, broken or cracked plates, cups or saucers. Those caught breaking the law were fined S$500 for their first offence and paid double for the second. As a result, hawkers began seeking out more durable alternatives to porcelain tableware, which were prone to wear out under heavy use.

But it was the local plastic manufacturers—Hoover Melamine, Yee Cheong Plastic Manufacturers, Singa Plastics, Eagle and Hiap Huat Pottery (later renamed Landex)—who popularised their adoption in the 1970s. As part of a state-driven industrialisation drive, they expanded their product offerings to include melamine tableware that offered hawkers a more affordable and readily available supply. Although still more costly than porcelain tableware, hawkers made the switch since they lasted longer and were less likely to chip.

Local melamine tableware originally came in just a few colours, such as pink, blue and orange. However, a demand for more variety emerged in the 1970s as the government resettled hawkers from the streets into hawker centres. Tableware of different colours helped hawkers differentiate and retrieve their own used ones in centres that housed up to hundreds of stalls.

By 1987, when all street hawkers had been resettled, they could choose from over 10 colours of melamine tableware offered by local manufacturers, including red, purple, lemon green, dark green, white and cream.

The light and durable melamine tableware grew in popularity especially as self-service became the norm at hawker centres with the continuing manpower crunch. It even became a selling point for the privately-run Tanjong Pagar Food Court at Amara Shopping Centre who claimed that “[i]t's not only healthier to use Melamine and steel utensils but they are environment friendly too.”

Despite the unsuccessful disposable tableware pilot, the government continued exploring other ways to raise the hygiene standards of hawkers. It became mandatory in 1990 for all food sellers to attend a hygiene course. In 1997, an annual grading system for hygiene and cleanliness was introduced for all food establishments. To meet these rising hygiene standards, hawkers began outsourcing the collection of used tableware to cleaning service providers from the 2000s. The durability of melamine tableware, however, ensured they remained the default choice for hawkers despite the various policy changes.

After a hiatus of 26 years, the government announced in 2011 that it would build hawker centres again as it recognised the need to offer Singaporeans access to a variety of affordable meals. Hawker centres also created jobs for residents and had become part of everyday life in the city-state. A panel of experts was appointed to improve hawker centre operations, which resulted in various recommendations including appointing socially-conscious enterprises to manage them. In 2013, the National Environment Agency also began to explore introducing centralised dishwashing in hawker centres to address the challenge of hiring dishwashers faced by many hawkers.

One of the earliest new generation hawker centres to be completed in 2015 was at Bukit Panjang and was run by NTUC Foodfare. Instead of the traditional array of colourful melamine tableware chosen by each hawker, the ones used in Bukit Panjang are in standardised white (non-halal) or grey (halal) emblazoned with the operator's logo. This practice was first popularised in the 1990s by food courts, essentially privately-run hawker centres, as they allowed for more efficient cleaning and distribution of tableware.

The practice of having privately-run hawker centres has continued with the 11 new ones that have been built by the government since 2015. Many have taken up recommendations by the Hawker Centre 3.0 Committee appointed by the state in 2016, including centralising operations such as dishwashing to raise productivity. While such measures can help make the trade more sustainable, they have inadvertently taken away hawkers' ability to select their own tableware.