Hawker centre

A hawker centre or cooked food centre (Chinese: 小贩中心; pinyin: xiǎofàn zhōngxīn or Chinese: 熟食中心; pinyin: shúshí zhōngxīn) is an open-air complex in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Riau Islands housing many stalls that sell a variety of inexpensive food. They are typically found in city centres, near public housing estates or transport hubs (such as bus interchanges or train stations).

Hawker centres were set up as a more sanitary option to street-side outdoor alfresco hawker dining places. Instead of mobile food hawker carts, permanent stalls in open air buildings are provided for the hawkers. Either common shared or stall dedicated tables and chairs are provided for customers. This concept has totally eliminated street hawkers in Singapore and reduced the numbers of street hawkers in major cities in South East Asia. This phenomenon is also helped by hawker licensing laws. However, it hinders new low capital hawker entrepreneurs from starting business resulting in high prices for established hawker centre stalls. Albeit, hawker centres can provide a one stop good variety of high quality and sanitary food at down to earth prices for everyone.

Hawker centres sprang up in urban areas following the rapid urbanisation in the 1950s and 1960s. In many cases, they were built partly to address the problem of unhygienic food preparation by unlicensed street hawkers. More recently, they have become less ubiquitous due to growing affluence in the urban populations of Malaysia and Singapore. Particularly in Singapore, they are increasingly being replaced by food courts, which are indoor, air conditioned versions of hawker centres located in shopping malls and other commercial venues.

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Wikipedia