SINGAPORE – Timbre Group says the 10 per cent discount offered to customers who pay via its app encourages repeat customers to Yishun Park Hawker Centre, which eventually helps hawkers generate more business. 

The operator, which runs two socially-conscious enterprise hawker centres (SEHCs) – One Punggol Hawker Centre and Yishun Park Hawker Centre – responded to recent criticism of its hawker centre management by food critic K.F. Seetoh in a press statement on Aug 26. 

Last week,

The Straits Times reported

that hawkers in some SEHCs, including those run by Timbre Group and FairPrice Group, had to absorb the 10 per cent discount offered to diners paying via operator apps. 

Timbre initially declined to comment, but said in its statement that the 10 per cent loyalty discount for app payments has been in place since 2017. The full cost of developing and maintaining the app is borne by the company, its spokesperson added.

It also addressed other claims made by Mr Seetoh in an Aug 23 Facebook post. The food industry veteran charged that Timbre takes “15 per cent of total sales from successful hawkers, otherwise they pay basic rents and all sorts of fees”, attaching a photo of a contract as evidence. 

In response, Timbre’s spokesperson said the 43-stall Yishun Park Hawker Centre operates under a gross turnover rental model where payable rent varies according to hawker earnings. 

Hawkers are charged either the base rent of $1,750 a month or 15 per cent of gross sales calculated monthly, whichever is higher.

How it works in practice: If 15 per cent of sales works out to $1,800, which is higher than the base rent of $1,750, the rent payable is $1,800. But if 15 per cent falls below the base rent, the tenant pays $1,750.

“This better shares the risks and rewards between the operator and the hawker. When earnings are low, a hawker pays lower rent. When earnings are good, the rent payable is higher,” Timbre said, adding that the maximum payable rent is capped at $2,550 a month.

“For some of our popular stalls, the effective rent relative to their turnover is therefore significantly lower than 15 per cent of their revenue.”

In a written parliamentary reply in February , the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment said the median stall rent of the 12 SEHCs in operation was $1,700. For non-subsidised cooked food stalls in hawker centres managed by the National Environment Agency (NEA) , the median rent has remained relatively stable at around $1,250 between 2015 and 2023.

When asked to comment on Timbre’s clarification on Aug 27 , Mr Seetoh said: “No one should apply a commercial foodcourt operation model to our hawker centres – that is, the gross turnover model. Our hawker centres are built for community and affordability, like food community centres. There must be a big rethink of our operator guidelines.” 

According to Timbre, the rent goes towards the operating revenue of the centre, and 50 per cent of the centre’s operating surplus is used to support stallholders through regular community programmes, as well as marketing campaigns aimed at boosting footfall. 

Gas prices

Mr Seetoh also questioned why Timbre did not use a cheaper gas provider, despite suggestions from hawkers. 

In 2024, all but two stallholders signed a Nov 25 open letter to the management, expressing “deep concerns regarding the exorbitant gas prices we have been burdened with for the past seven years”.

“At $14-15 per unit (cubic metre), these costs have been unreasonably high and unsustainable for small businesses like ours,” they wrote.

They claimed that despite multiple requests to introduce alternative gas suppliers with more economical rates below $10 a unit, which would have saved them 33 per cent in gas costs, “no actionable progress” was made. 

Earlier in 2025, Timbre extended a $1 a cubic metre discount to all hawkers. It maintains that Yishun Park Hawker Centre’s gas supply is “provided centrally and secured through competitive procurement”.

Stallholders currently pay $14 a cubic metre for gas at the hawker centre.

Hawkers at Yishun Park Hawker Centre have called for lower gas prices.

PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

CCTV cameras 

In addition, Mr Seetoh claimed that Timbre installs CCTV cameras in “every stall to monitor sales” to “ensure no one cheats”. This move, he said, invades stallholders’ privacy, as the cameras “have listening capabilities”. 

Timbre says the cameras were installed in August 2024, following repeated feedback from residents living nearby on noise levels late at night. 

“While we had reminded all hawkers to minimise noise during these hours, the feedback had continued. The CCTVs enable us to identify the potential sources of noise, so that we can better address residents’ feedback,” its spokesman said.

It adds that the CCTVs are useful for safety and security, resolving occasional customer disputes and verifying situations where a few hawkers were “observed not to conduct their transactions using the point-of-sales”, making it hard to determine the rent payable.

In a Facebook post on Aug 27 , Mr Seetoh pointed out that “no hawker shouts incessantly when in the stall at work” and that noise concerns were no excuse for Timbre to surveil them with CCTVs. He claimed that there are a lot of hawker centres next to residential blocks and NEA found no need to install CCTVs in each stall.

In the Aug 23 post, he also accused Timbre of imposing excessive fines on hawkers, calling its list of $100 fines “scary”. It includes non-compliance offences such as refusal to accept loyalty apps as mode of payment for purchases and placing food and/or supplies on floor. 

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Timbre says these non-compliance charges have been part of its tenancy agreements since inception to ensure fairness to all stallholders. 

“We have clauses in our tenancy agreements to provide a clean and conducive environment for all hawkers to operate in, as well as to ensure compliance with other areas such as the personal operations of the stall and the proper hiring of additional manpower,” it adds.  

“These charges are applied as a last resort to deter repeated non-compliances, after multiple verbal reminders and written notices are provided. Thus far, our regular patrons at Yishun Park Hawker Centre have acknowledged the consistently clean and comfortable dining environment they continue to enjoy.” 

It also clarified that the operator-run Timbre Pizza, which Mr Seetoh saw as evidence of the operator “depriving other independent hawkers” of a chance to operate another stall, had ceased operations at One Punggol Hawker Centre on Aug 17, as part of “planned business and manpower restructuring”. 

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