Why a national beach volleyball player and an engineer became 3rd-generation full-time hawkers
Singapore’s hawker culture was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.

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SINGAPORE: Ms Faye Sai was a national beach volleyball player for eight years and Mr Ryk Chew was in the engineering industry for more than 12 years.
But both are now third-generation hawker stall owners.
Mr Chew, who took over his father’s rice dumpling stall Hoo Kee Bak Chang told CNA938’s Eat Drink Singapore that he was not about to let the business, which has been around for almost 80 years, just shut down.
“This business started with my grandparents, one of my aunts, two uncles and my dad. They put a lot of effort into this trade, to make Hoo Kee Bak Chang a household name for rice dumplings,” he said.
“It will be such a shame for nobody to take it up to get the business and, and their legacy to carry on.”
Although it appeared like a natural step for him to preserve his family’s business, it was “not an easy task” as he works long and gruelling hours, and did not have experience managing a business, he said.
Ms Sai, who was also on the show and runs Coffee Break at hawker centres at Amoy Street, Market Street and Hong Lim, considered being a professional athlete till she would need to retire, but her father’s health made her decide differently.
“I did want to give that chance but my dad was ailing in his health and he would close the stall a couple of days a week when his body couldn't take it or if he was falling ill,” she said.
“The bigger part of me wanted to continue what he did, which was the fine craft of local kopi brewing, and represent Singapore in that sense.”

KEEPING TRADITIONS ALIVE AND EXPERIMENTING
When Ms Sai and her siblings took over the stall, they wanted to make sure the quality of his drinks would not be compromised.
“The sock method, the (method of) brewing the coffee beans is all the same from my father's time, from his father's time. So it's something that we still do very, very well, that everyone knows us for,” she said.
“But because we are younger, we want to stand out. What we did was actually to introduce flavours that are a little bit uncommon. So for example, our sea salt caramel kopi, or our black sesame teh.”
They also introduced earl grey cream toast, and now kueh salat toast, offering wholemeal bread as a healthier option.
“That has helped to attract the younger crowd to come in and try and they in turn, once they try that they try drinking the very basic kopi,” said Ms Sai, who is also vice-chair of the Federation of Merchants’ Associations Singapore. She added the older generation are also game to try more modern flavours.
"Just because we have heritage recipes, (it) doesn't mean we cannot encourage new recipes that will actually become tradition and heritage 20 years later, when our children become adults," she said.
Mr Chew has also worked on widening the customer base of the stall, which has been a Michelin Bib Gourmand recipient in the rice dumpling category since 2016.
HIs father had already stopped using the fatty pork usually used in bak zhang, opting for leaner pork to be healthier, but when Mr Chew joined the business, he introduced a “deluxe all-in” option that contains pork, chestnut, salted egg yolk and mushroom.
He also took the business online, and improved its marketing.
LIVING THE HAWKER LIFE
Although Mr Chew got into the business to help his parents, his father was against the idea, he said.
“He knew that it means a lot of sacrifices, less social time, less family time and long hours, especially it's not easy to be a businessman, you know, especially (since) I majored in engineering, nothing to do with business at all,” he said.
However, growing up watching his parents, Mr Chew said that he had developed an “irresistible attachment to this culinary art of making traditional rice dumplings” and always knew he would take over the business one day.
Mr Chew typically starts his day at 3am and ends at 6pm.
“Day in, day out (my job) is (working on) operation, the chores that you have to do. And when you come when you have time to sit down and think about it, your eyes are shutting down and your brains are not working at all,” he said.
Hoo Kee Bak Chang won the Hawker Heritage Award at this year’s Singapore Hawkers’ Awards, which celebrates hawker brands where management and culinary skills have been passed down through generations and contribute towards the continuation of the nation’s hawker culture.
Singapore’s hawker culture was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.
“Winning this heritage award affirms my effort and spurs me to strive on. It also honours our family pioneers whose hard work has borne fruit,” said Mr Chew.
Ms Sai’s journey is different from Mr Chew’s.
“I was really attracted by the free-flow coffee. For a kopi stall, our hours are a little bit shorter when we have to operate at the hawker centre,” she said.
Her father and civil servant mother also showed that they could put their five children through university, she said.
“It looked like I could build a family, I could have a career, I could have some work-life balance. And that was why I decided to tell my dad ‘pa, let me take over this business for you’”, she said.
Her father’s only condition was that she get a degree first, which she did in marketing with a view of expanding the business.
There needs to be more education on becoming a hawker, said Ms Sai.
“If maybe, we start them from young, we condition them, we engage them from young to consider the hawker trade as a perfectly viable option. It can start from (children) being educated in schools,” she said.
“Like every other job, if you're new at it, it will be challenging, it will be tough, but you will come up with a system to work around it, get the hang of things, come up with a system to work efficiently,” she added.
Eat Drink Singapore on Work It with Cheryl Goh and Stanley Leong airs weekdays 12.10pm on CNA938.