You’re probably familiar with the name A Noodle Story. Even if you don’t work around the Tanjong Pagar area, you would’ve heard of the Amoy Street Food Centre hawker stall after it was featured on the Michelin Bib Gourmand guide for the past two years.
Whipping up what the two “hawkerpreneurs” call Singapore-style ramen, the stall serves bowls of springy mee kia topped with tender slivers of pork belly, pork and shrimp wontons, onsen egg, and crispy potato-wrapped prawn to hordes of customers at lunch and dinner daily. Just look for one of the longest lines in the hawker centre, and you’ll find it.
But what makes A Noodle Story stand out isn’t just its tasty food, impressive queues, and Michelin recognition. The duo behind the stall are also known for their transparent honesty when it comes to their hawker experience and the cost price of their ingredients.
Yesterday, the eatery took to its Facebook page to talk about the cost of running a hawker stall and the small returns in a business that requires hours of exhaustingly hard labor. It started off by saying its foremost mission was and is “to make people happy through food”, even if it’s at the cost of their earnings.
But as a business owner, this “artificially depressed pricing” hurts low-wage hawker assistants the most.
The post went on to highlight one hawker assistant who, for S$1,800 a month, works 12 hours a day, even on public holidays, with no annual or medical leave benefits and no CPF contribution from the employer.
“This is cheapening someone’s time,” the post said. “Just because we can get away with it doesn’t mean it is right.”
“Hawkers use their blood and sweat to cook each dish,” it added. “And if they scale up the volume served, it’s through sheer hard work and effort. They deserve every single reward they are entitled to.”
At the end of it all, A Noodle Story said that its prices would be adjusted to S$8 for a small bowl and S$11 for the medium one, with the increase in margin going solely towards the wages and benefits for its hawker assistants.
It then offered a price breakdown of each individual ingredient:
- Noodles (S$2)
- Whole egg (S$1.50 because it’s a USA-patented pasteurized egg)
- Char siu (S$1.30/slice)
- Wonton (S$0.80/piece)
- Potato-wrapped prawn (S$1.30/piece).
When you realize how all that already adds up to S$6.90, you can see how they’d need to hike up the price.
But if you compare it to ramen from Japanese joints, well, it’s still pretty value-for-money.
Loyal customers of A Noodle Story wouldn’t be surprised by this stark honesty, since the owners bared their soul just a year ago in another Facebook post explaining the quality of their ingredients and justifying their initial price hike for the small bowl to S$7.
The owners’ refreshing candour was very much appreciated by netizens, some of whom vowed to continue supporting the eatery. Perhaps we too need a similarly honest, easy-to-digest outline of why the GST needs to be hiked soon.
Syed Aljunied says
The two “hawkerpreneurs” know that for Singaporeans the higher the price the better the quality and, more importantly, the more one-upmanship value the product has with fellow Singaporeans.