$5.80 chicken drumstick rice but no drumstick; customer ‘shocked’

SINGAPORE: A woman took to social media to express her extreme surprise after the chicken drumstick rice she ordered contained no drumstick but a very small portion of meat, some rice, and nothing else.

“Shock to c my $5.80 chicken drumsticks rice from Bedok 925 chicken rice,” wrote Ms Lina Yeo on the popular COMPLAINT SINGAPORE Facebook page on Tuesday evening (March 26).

The Independent Singapore has reached out to Ms Yeo and Yishun 925 Chicken Rice for further comment or updates.

Commenters on Ms Yeo’s post tended to agree with her that the portion seemed rather meagre.

One Facebook user wrote that “they took away half” of Ms Yeo’s “drum.”

“Where that drum?” another asked, while another looked for the “drumstick end.”

One tried to find the humour in the situation, writing that it must have been a “Spring chicken drumstick,” as spring chickens are smaller than regular ones.

“Pathetic portion !!!!!!!! It’s $5.80!” a commenter chimed in.

Others noted that the dish’s presentation looked “terrible”, while one netizen said it “looked sad.”

A commenter seemed to find the dish too plain, writing, “Aiyo.. no cucumber? No leaf..?”

“I think nowadays some of the hawker sellers really too much. The most important issue is that they taking things for granted less food with high price. Really sad and disappointed,” wrote another Facebook user.

The poor state of the dish comes as a surprise, given that Yishun 925 has gotten many good reviews online, with one food blogger even writing that it serves “The Best Chicken Rice in the North.”

Ms Yeo’s post, however, is just the latest among those concerned with higher food prices and smaller portions, a phenomenon termed by many as “shrinkflation.”

This has happened increasingly as prices, especially for food, have increased over the past few years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, and global events affecting food supply.

The phenomenon is explained by Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) as:

“In economics, shrinkflation is the practice of reducing the size or quantity of a product while the price of the product remains the same or slightly increases.

In some cases, the term may indicate lowering the quality of a product or its ingredients while the price remains the same.”

In one recent local example, a customer was unhappy after the large order of McDonald’s fries she paid S$4.60 for was only half full. /TISG

Read also: Shrinkflation woes: GST increased just 1% but food reduced to “kids meal portion” that looked like “leftovers”