§2.12Buying Circles – Hawkers Bargain Together

RUN BY HAWKERS · NO MEMBER FEE, NO NEW AGENCY
BUILDS ON · OPERATORS' BULK BUYING & HAWKERS UNITED – DABAO 2020

A hawker buys alone. He buys oil, rice, eggs and chilli in small lots from many sellers, at whatever price the van brings; he pays for power on whatever plan came with the stall; and on every delivery order he hands the platform about 30% of the sale, plus GST, which is GrabFood's published service fee (foodpanda does not publish its own). Granted, most of a commission pays the riders, not the platform; and since Deliveroo went offline in Singapore after 4 March 2026 there are two large platforms, not three. In the model's typical tendered stall that is about $7,860 a month of ingredients, $1,000 of utilities and $424 of delivery commission (Follow the Plate, D.3). Small firms everywhere answer this the same way: they band together and ask for a better price. That is all I propose here. The Seed Bank never buys, stocks, sets prices or picks suppliers, and it never takes title to goods or money. Every hawker keeps his own supplier and his own recipe. The plan only makes it easier for small groups of hawkers to ask for a better price, and for suppliers to compete for them.

Circles at each centre, run by the hawkers. Through their own hawkers' association, the stalls at a centre form small buying circles: one for rice, one for oil, one for poultry, one for gas. Joining is voluntary, there is no exclusivity, and a hawker can leave any week. Each circle has a lead, usually a hawker, who gathers the week's orders. Assumption: a small honorarium of $100 a month for each lead.
Buying together, never pricing together. Hawkers are businesses, and competition law applies to them as to anyone. A circle negotiates only what its members buy. It never discusses or recommends what members charge diners, never shares members' prices or margins, and never boycotts a supplier. The association takes competition advice before the first circle opens.
Suppliers compete in the open. A circle posts its pooled weekly volume on an open price board, wholesalers and distributors offer terms, and the circle chooses. No supplier is favoured, and more orders flow to Singapore's small suppliers, not fewer: a distributor who could never reach a centre one stall at a time can now bid for all of its circle at once. Centre operators' existing bulk-purchase offers simply join the board, and so can a member's own supplier. Assumption: members pay 3% less for ingredients. That is plausible because one pooled weekly order is cheaper to serve than twenty small ones: one drop instead of many, a predictable volume and prompt payment. The supplier and the cook share that saving; it is not taken out of anyone's profit (Follow the Plate, D.5.2). No Singapore data exists, so the pilot centres test it and the evaluator publishes the result, whatever it is (§6.4).
Power is bought the same way. Singapore's electricity market is open to competition, so all the stalls at a centre can change retailer together, and retailers compete for their combined demand. Gas is negotiated by circle. Assumption: utilities 10% cheaper.
No tied suppliers. Some operator-run centres require stallholders to buy gas or crockery from a supplier the operator chose, a point Hazel Poa made in the 2024 debate; MSE has said one operator will look for cheaper gas when its contract ends (MSE, 24 Sep 2025). A captive buyer is the one place a middleman can charge what he likes. So I ask NEA to bar compulsory designated suppliers at operator-run centres, or to require that any centre-wide supply contract be re-tendered in the open, with its price shown on the Plate Ledger. It needs no new law.
Delivery is negotiated per centre. The association asks the platforms for a group commission rate for its centre. Failing that, members take orders through commission-free channels, building on ground-up ones such as Hawkers United – Dabao 2020 (the Record, A.1.2). Assumption: a group rate of 25%, against the published list rate of 30%. The circles aim for 15%, but that is a target to negotiate, not a saving in hand: no group rate is published, and 15% is half of Grab's. Because most of a commission pays the rider, a lower rate is a real cost to the platform, and the evaluator reports what the centres actually win.
The Seed Bank's part is small. It provides the open price board, which reuses the Plate Ledger's cost data (§2.10), standard group-order templates, and one part-time partnerships role. Assumption: the role at half time, $39,000 a year; the board at $10,000 to set up and $4,000 a year after; four circle leads at each centre at least, and one for about every 30 stalls, so eight at Chinatown Complex. There is no member fee. Granted, at three centres the circles do not pay for themselves, so the operating budget carries them (§7.1): $206,580 over the four years, contingency included. The savings stay with the hawkers.

What it is worth. For a typical tendered stall the three together add about $407 a month to the hawker's profit before tax, or $4,878 a year; after tax, that is $4,791 a year in income and savings (Follow the Plate, D.7). Buying ingredients together raises the rent a typical tendered hawker can pay before he earns less than his assistant, from about $1,540 a month (with price freedom, vouchers, the Corps and the Protection Floor) to about $1,780; cheaper power, to about $1,640; delivery at a 25% group rate, to about $1,610 (Follow the Plate, D.4.1). If the circles won their 15% target, delivery alone would take it to about $1,760. Where does the saving come from? Not, on the evidence, from fat built up in the chain. Singapore's food margins have tracked import prices since 2019 (§2.10), and the tolls worth the name are elsewhere: the delivery platforms; tied suppliers at some operator-run centres; and past cartel conduct, which CCCS (Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore) punished in 2018, fining 13 fresh-chicken distributors with more than 90% of the market about $26.9M for fixing prices from 2007 to 2014 (CCCS, 12 Sep 2018). Each cut between the farm and the plate, and what it pays for, is followed in Follow the Plate, D.5.3. The circles lower the cost of serving many small buyers; the supplier and the cook share what that saves, and more suppliers get the chance to bid. The plan claims no profiteering, and does not need to.

Why circles, and not a central buyer. Granted, buying together is an old idea, and in Singapore it has not taken off. The Government's own Public Consultation Panel proposed "central bulk purchases" in 2012 (Panel report, ¶12), and the Hawker Centre 3.0 Committee asked for bulk purchasing of ingredients in its fifth recommendation, accepted in 2017; nine years on it exists only inside some operators' centres. Some operators of socially-conscious enterprise centres already offer bulk purchasing, and the Minister told Parliament that take-up has not been widespread: most stallholders keep their own suppliers or are particular about quality (MSE, written reply to Edward Chia, 10 Jan 2024). The circles meet both reasons only if a member's own supplier can bid too, which is why every board is open to it. In the debate of 13 November 2024 Hazel Poa, a Non-Constituency MP of the Progress Singapore Party, proposed a centralised procurement system in which a new agency would contract with wholesalers and hawkers could choose to buy through it; she also noted that some operators of socially-conscious enterprise centres require stallholders to buy gas and crockery from designated suppliers (her speech, as her party published it). I share the aim of cheaper ingredients for hawkers. I do not agree with a single national buyer, even an optional one: it would narrow the competition among Singapore's suppliers, not widen it. So the circles are hawker-led, and the Seed Bank never buys, stocks or picks a supplier. A circle is not a state buyer, and a price board is not a mandate. The circles are the hawkers' own collective bargaining on the buying side, the way small firms already band together, and with the guardrail above they need no new agency and no legislation. Here the hawker chooses, every order.