Lie Kam Fatt has been running a traditional Chinese dessert stall in Singapore for more than 40 years selling a wide range of sweet soups and custards, such as black-sesame and red-bean pastes. In December, he had to do something he hadn’t done in three years: raise his prices. Lie now charges an extra 50 Singapore cents (36 US cents) per bowl. It may not sound like much, but for the mostly elderly, lower-income customers he serves, every cent counts. “I know some of my customers will grumble about it, but I may have to shut down my business if I don’t raise prices. All of my ingredients have become too expensive,” he said. Lie runs a stall at Singapore’s Chinatown Complex Market & Food Centre, the largest of more than 100 hawker centre – open-air food courts that sell a variety of cuisines at affordable prices – in the country. But while a S$5 (US$3.60) meal is a delicious novelty for tourists and an appealingly cheap alternative for some locals, for others, it’s a necessity. Hawker stalls are staples for lower-income individuals who can sometimes live off as little as S$5 a day, and for this segment of the population, a 50 cent price increase amounts to a big difference. Lie is one of many hawkers in Singapore who have had to raise their prices in the first half of 2022 to continue to make profits as the costs of many common ingredients – including cooking oil, chicken, and eggs – have jumped in the past year because of Covid-19 , the supply-chain crisis, and the war in Ukraine . A bak kut teh shop that sold a S$5 pork-rib dish for 18 years without adjusting its price, for example, just raised the price by S$6, and one drinks stall has had to tack on an extra 10 cents to each of its S$1.50 drinks since December. ‘Hell on earth’: can the world spend its way out of the global food crisis? For the 65-year-old Lie, he said the cost of almonds alone, which he uses to make his sweet-almond paste, has more than doubled since November last year – going from S$7 per kilogram to S$14.50 “In all my years of doing this, I don’t remember things becoming so expensive so quickly. But I have to keep going on. This was my father’s business and I want it to last for as long as possible,” Lie said. The good news is that customers, for the most part, are still coming. Despite the price increase, many hawker centres have seen an increase of around 60 per cent in the number of diners in the past few months amid the lifting of pandemic dining restrictions, said KF Seetoh, a local food critic. The revenue is the same, but our costs have gone up – no thanks to Russia KF Seetoh, food critic and Makansutra Gluttons Bay founder Seetoh, a former photojournalist, has been reporting on hawker centres since 1996. He founded Makansutra Gluttons Bay, a famed Singapore hawker centre, in 1997, which today has nine stalls and is best known for being the one of the few hawker centres to offer a view of the Marina Bay skyline. “Younger people understand what we hawkers go through,” a former hotel chef who owns a wok hey , or stir-fried dishes, stall in Chinatown and wishes to be identified only by his first name, Daniel, said. He has been in the hawker business for a year and a half. Daniel said the bulk of his supplies have doubled in cost. A 16kg can of Golden Medallion, his cooking oil of choice, has shot up from S$26 to S$47. Meanwhile, a tray of 30 eggs used to cost S$4.70, but increased to S$6.90 in May. Just a year ago, a kilogram of chicken thigh cost him S$2.60. It’s now gone up to S$4.50. “Most hawkers get their supplies from the same few suppliers,” Daniel said. “I’ve started to look for alternative suppliers, mostly online, where prices might be more affordable.” Unlike other hawkers, Seetoh pushed back on raising prices. He said his stalls continue to earn around S$1,000 to S$2,000 a night – but profits are much lower than before, as his business absorbs the rising cost of supplies. “The revenue is the same, but our costs have gone up – no thanks to Russia,” Seetoh said. His stalls sell a variety of cuisines including Indian-Pakistani dishes and Western-style food. Why Asia faces a looming ‘rice crisis’ amid ‘inevitable’ price rises Despite the cost of supplies increasing by up to 50 per cent, some hawkers are unable to raise their prices because of the competitive landscape of hawker food in Singapore. “Hawkers don’t really dare to raise their prices,” Seetoh said. “If you raise your prices, a customer can just take a few steps to another stall where your competitor sells food for 50 cents cheaper.” Read the original article on Business Insider