What are the risks involved in setting up a Hawker Stall?

1. Investment Capital

• Cost of raw material & ingredients

• Rental /Utility deposit

• Operating expenses (Wages, Rent, Utilities etc.)

• Stall renovation

2. Am I willing to do this full time?

A lot of times, people are not willing to jump into a Hawker Business (or any other business) because there is this fear that it might not succeed. What happens if I quit my day job to go into the hawker business and it eventually fails? How do I know whether my hawker business will succeed? Am I able to keep my full-time job and hire someone to operate my hawker business?

All these are valid questions and definitely questions that many would ask. Although it is possible to hold a full-time job and hire someone to operate your hawker business, it is not often practiced by hawkers. This is why...

1. By hiring someone to run the hawker store for you, you wouldn't be able to understand the operations of your business well. If you are a one-hit-wonder (Congrats- you got lucky) but most of the time, that is not the case. A brand requires time and effort to build, especially in the case of hawkers, most brands are built by the connections made with the customers. They know you, they will know the brand. Don't you agree that customers recognize the brand by the boss?!

2. Instead of having a passive income from your hawker stalls, you might be bleeding out money monthly. By hiring people to run your stores, they ARE NOT THE BOSS, and most of the time they DO NOT think for the boss. Therefore, there might be issues of wastages etc. Yes, you might be thinking, "Oh, but that is a rare case. I can minimize the wastages by finding someone who is better". Well, that reasoning only holds water if you ARE able to find people. In Singapore, it is not easy to find people who are willing to work in the hawker stall because it is stuffy and smokey.

3. Hawkers believe that by working full time, they control their income. If they want to earn more, they will open till late at night. If they are contented with what they have, they can just close early at 3 pm and head back home to rest. As a hawker, they control their income and not the other way.

If you have thought through these few points and are still interested in opening a hawker store read more to find out the next steps to take.

(How to start your own hawker store?)

P.s. If you want to reduce your risk of going into the hawker trade, why not open a business under a legendary and proven brand in the market? Read more now!