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GLOBAL CONFORMITY OR CULTURAL DIVERSITY?

The changing nature of working environments and lifestyles are increasingly creating a need for people to eat inexpensive meals outside their homes or on the run to work or school.

IngredientsOn the one hand, street food stimulates the demand for traditional ingredients and produce, best provided by local enterprises and agriculture.

It also increases tourism as Singapore’s popular Geylang Serai Market proves.

On the other hand, the response to satisfying (and possibly fuelling) this need is the expansion of fast food companies globally.

Take KFC (as Kentucky Fried Chicken is now known) – this international franchise opened the first foreign-owned fast food outlet in Beijing in 1987.

Fifteen years later, KFC was operating 600 outlets in China where the total fast food sales exceed US$24 billion a year.

As economic enterprises, there are stark contrasts between street food and fast food outlets, for instance in terms of the:

  • different kinds of foods sold
  • marketing techniques, and
  • types of ownership.

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The fast food enterprise

  • Specialises in fewer kinds of food.
  • Usually sells deep-fried, eg fried chicken, potato chips, fries and pizzas.
  • Operates indoors
  • Has distinctive décor
  • Employs staff (usually uniformed).
  • Marketing relies on advertising and in-store specials for brand loyalty, eg McDonald’s Happy Meals.
  • Tends to be foreign-owned or franchised.
  • Management oversees provision of materials, menu and preparation in host country.
  • Portion of profits sent back to the home country.

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The streetfood enterprise

  • Offers variety and diversity of ingredients.
  • Uses raw materials and variety of preparation methods, eg boiling, baking or stewing.
  • Operates in proximity to transportation hubs, office blocks, schools and busy places.
  • Uses word-of-mouth as marketing.
  • Owned exclusively by individuals and families.
  • Profits ploughed back into the local economy.

It is therefore important to identify potential obstacles to the continued co-existence of culturally rooted street food stalls alongside the generic fast food chains being propelled into developing countries by the engines of globalisation.

As a largely unregulated sector of the economy, the social, cultural and economic value of street food can be seriously undermined by the growth of fast-food outlets and the legitimacy these enjoy as part of the formal, and even global economy.

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On the streets

Most countries do not have policies or programmes concerning street food vending.

Singapore and Malaysia offer positive examples of how to improve conditions for street vendors.

Singapore

KioskIn Singapore street food vendors were removed from the streets and housed in hawker centres.

These centres are integrated into high-rise office and housing blocks and form part of a wider urban renewal plan.

Singapore’s Lau Pa Sat (Old Market), a national monument converted into a maze of souvenir stalls and food outlets, now provides improved hygiene in well-organised spaces.

Malaysia

china2Malaysia adopted a mix of policies incorporating the Singapore model and other strategies.

Developers of office blocks and new housing complexes are required to include hawker centres for vending.

Elsewhere, local authorities offer an extensive programme of infrastructure improvements and vendor training, including:

  • health checks
  • provision of appropriate clothing
  • water supply
  • garbage collection, and
  • instruction in food handling.