In response to an article published on Mothership.sg (Thank you policymakers, local hawker culture is dying because of you. *Hugs*), NTUC Foodfare sent us a love letter email explaining the tender process.

A bit of context before we proceed: Fishball Story owner 24-year-old Douglas Ng previously complained about a criterion, which according to him, uses the number of years of experience a hawker has for evaluation.

Here's the email in full.

Dear Editors,

Based on the many conversations generated from Bukit Panjang Hawker Centre, we will like to share with you our aim to bring the best hawkers that can meet the centre’s objectives of all day affordable, tasty dining options.

We had moved away from tendered rent being the only criteria, with an aim to provide a more robust selection of stalls that can contribute to the variety, vibrancy and affordable offerings of good food that we aim to bring to residents, based on our last survey conducted in 2012 of residents’ expectations and demands.

We had purposefully introduced a new set of criteria that would not award the stalls based on the highest rental bids, as is done in other hawker centres. We also did not want to discriminate against age or taste alone, as our judging criterion as this may be subjective. This is done so that individuals with the best ideas and passion for food can compete fairly regardless of their background, based on the objectives set for this centre. This new evaluation criteria is based on a scorecard with only 40% weightage for tendered rent, while the remaining 60% consists of quality, variety, selling price, operating hours, experience and concept - criteria that we felt were important to meet the expectations of residents for the centre. The same criteria were also shared with interested tenderers during their briefing, so that they understand how to bid for the stalls.

We received over 300 bids for 6 kiosks and 26 cooked food stalls, and as shared in the briefings, only shortlisted cooked food stalls tenderers with the best scores were required to participate in a food tasting exercise by a selection panel, as part of the due process towards the final stage. The food tasting allowed us to evaluate the offerings proposed, in terms of the proportion, quality and taste.

We are happy to share that the overwhelming response for the bids for the stalls had brought forth proposals with attractive selling prices, interesting menu offerings and food types, from many individuals with a strong passion for food, especially local hawker favourites. We are heartened to see that based on the proposals submitted, that there were many hawkers that subscribe to our vision and our commitment to help provide affordable, quality food for Singaporeans.

We saw a good mix of tenderers - second generation and young hawkers eager to carve their own name whilst carrying on their family tradition of hawkers, as well as established hawkers with good brand names - eager to bring their best to the table. To-date, more than 50 applicants that made the cut were invited to participate in the food tasting round and successful applicants will be informed and offered a stall by October. Although we received many good proposals, we regret that we are unable to accommodate more hawkers due to the limited number of stalls. Whilst we congratulate those who had been successful, we would like to encourage others who are keen to try their hand in the food industry or help keep the food heritage alive, but have failed to secure a place at our centre, to keep trying at the other hawker centres or upcoming site when they are available.

Mr Sam Lee

Head of Hawker Centre Unit

NTUC Foodfare Co-operative Ltd

The end.

Top photo from Fishball Story Facebook page

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