SINGAPORE: A young hawker who took to social media to share her worries about low customer turnout in December received a lot of encouragement from Singaporeans sympathetic to her plight.
Some even asked where her family’s stall was so that they could bring in some business.
Hwee Yi used to be a police officer but ended up taking over her parents’ Cantonese Porridge Business (Botak Porridge) at Our Tampines Hub. She let go of her job to help her parents retire early and travel the globe, which they’ve long wanted to do.
But this month has not been easy for Ms Hwee, as she shared in a TikTok post that has since gone viral.
In the opening slides of her post, she simply wrote that business has been “okay,” albeit “a bit slow” recently. However, in her last slide, she wrote that “on a deeper level… I really hate the month of December.”
The young hawker wrote that people in the food and beverage industry experience a bit of a downtime in the last month of the year, “especially for hawkers. Business is so slow, it’s honestly a little scary.”
Her mum, being a seasoned veteran, endeavoured to assure Ms Hwee, telling her that “December is always like this.” Business is quiet, her mum added, because everyone is travelling.
However, the lack of customers has appeared to fill Ms Hwee with some degree of self-doubt, and she wrote that she “can’t help but feel uneasy.”
Ms Hwee reached the point of wondering if she was doing something wrong and whether she had failed to maintain the food quality at the stall, causing an exodus of their customers.
“I’m really worried,” she wrote, expressing the hope that customers will come back next month from their travels and business will pick up, and adding that she has her fingers crossed.
“WHERE IS EVERYONE?” she even wrote in a comment to her post. Viewers who were moved by her honesty and vulnerability quickly reassured her that she was not alone.
A fellow hawker who has been in the industry for nearly nine years said that December is the hardest month due to many Singaporeans going on overseas trips.
One commenter encouraged her to learn the patterns of the trade and rest during the low seasons; otherwise, she might end up overthinking and stressing herself.
Others, however, sprang into action. “WHERE IS THIS?” one TikTok user asked, saying she’d come down with her friends. In a later TikTok, the grateful hawker thanked those who left encouraging comments.
@hawkergirl98 Replying to @sushiisgoofy We are located at: • Our Tampines Hub Hawker Centre #01 -65 • One Punggol Hawker Centre #02 -14 THANK YOUU 🥹
See more of Ms Hwee’s story here:
/TISG