Singapore’s elderly street food hawkers bowled over by Instagram campaign

The @wheretodapao page promotes the mostly elderly vendors who struggled to promote themselves online during Covid-19 restrictions

Singapore’s hawker centres have won global acclaim and were recognised by Unesco last year as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

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People eat at a hawker centre in Singapore. The country’s famed street food vendors suffered as a result of coronavirus curbs. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:15pm, 30 Jun 2021Updated: 1:15pm, 30 Jun 2021

Seah Hui Li rises before dawn every morning to make 400 traditional steamed buns filled with creamy red bean paste to sell in one of Singapore’s famed hawker markets. But as Covid-19 restrictions kept diners away, the 63-year-old stallholder struggled.

Business is now looking up, thanks to an Instagram campaign aimed at helping elderly vendors and ensuring the city state’s rich tradition of local street food continues to thrive.

The campaign promotes the stalls of struggling hawkers who have been hit hardest by the pandemic because they are not digitally savvy enough to promote themselves on food delivery platforms. The @wheretodapao page – which is Mandarin for “where to takeaway” – has more than 37,000 followers and carries photos of some 75 stalls, short biographies of the hawkers and reviews of their cuisine.

“The social media post definitely helped my business,” said Hui Li. “I saw many new faces who said they are here because they saw the post online.”

The Instagram site is the brainchild of 24-year-old social media executive Jocelyn Ng, who was inspired to help the hawkers after reading about their struggles in an article on social media.

“I’m not an influencer or anything,” she said. “I just wanted to share the personal stories of all these elderly hawkers.”