Low Yen Ling’s Post

Great Budget Meal Hunt is officially launched with many coffee shops taking part islandwide to provide S$3.50 meals. The government is encouraging food stalls to pick a meal/dish per stall to price it at a cheap price of S$3.50 in return for a discount on rental. This will help ease the inflationary pressure for consumers with regards to food and at the same time, bring more business to these stalls. I had supported some of these stalls and they were indeed value for money. Decent portion. This is a great initiative to help small businesses and general consumers to ride through this long period of inflation and high costs of living. Exciting times. From CDC vouchers to Budget Meal, the Singapore government is rolling out various initiatives to benefit both small businesses and general consumers. Am sure other governments would soon adopt these to implement in their countries. Good things must share. Connect with me and stay tuned. For those staying in Singapore, do support these stalls. Better years ahead! 🇸🇬🇸🇬🇸🇬🇸🇬🇸🇬

As mentioned in an earlier post, most Europeans went back to their pre-covid eating habits after the Covid-19 crisis. In Ireland, the 2022 expenditure in catering services on total household consumption per capita was as high as ever, being 13,8%, which is the highest share in the EU27. The Irish spend more on Food and Beverages out-of-home than in-home, and that happens nowhere else in the EU27. Yet, the hospitality sector in Ireland suffers, as explained in below article. Hospitality entrepreneurs blame high wages, high food prices and government policies, as well as the difficulty of finding skilled personnel or adapting to changing consumer preferences. The underlying issue, however, is the low apparent labor productivity (APL), being the sum of wages and salaries, social security expenses and operating surplus per person employed in the sector. In Ireland, the APL of the Food and Beverage service sector (I56) was just 13,7% of the average economy in 2021 (measured by Eurostat aggregate B-S_X_O_S94). This implies that you need more than seven persons employed in this sector to add the same value as the average person employed. Yet, these people and their families need housing, health care, education and other services. In the EU27, the sector APL is 30,2% of average, which is also among the lowest of all sectors. However, nowhere it is as low as in Ireland. Therefore, the sector was only able to pay an average wage per employee in 2021 of 16.794 €, which was 40,1% of average. On average, employees worked part-time 67,1% of FTE in 2021, i.e. personnel seemed to work mainly on peak hours and was paid by the hour. The irregular working hours, the low wages and the high job insecurity made the sector unattractive for workers, and, after the Covid-19 crisis, they massively moved on to sectors with better perspectives. This did not only happen in Ireland, but also in other labor tight economies like the Netherlands. How different is the situation is Spain, the country with the second highest expenditure in catering services on total household consumption per capita in the EU27 in 2022, being 12,7%. Spaniards spent in 2022 almost as much on Food and Beverages out-of-home as in-home. The sector seems healthy and its huge offer and choice at affordable prices is an important asset to the tourist sector. In a next post, I will compare Spanish and Dutch enterprises with food and beverage service activities.

👍 More Competition to Retail Grocery in New Zealand New Zealand is about to pass and implement legislation to address one of the most concentrated supermarket sectors in the world. The competitive landscape consists of two leading players and a small number of very minor players. In 2020, the government called upon the Commerce Commission to investigate the supermarket (grocery) sector. The commission concluded in mid-2022 and made several recommendations that will enter into force from 2023 and beyond. One recommendation is The Grocery Supply Code of Conduct which lays out the minimum conduct which major grocery retailers must adhere to when dealing with their suppliers. The New Zealand government is still in the process of completing the drafting of the document. ↪️ Read more at https://vist.ly/qt5t #NewZealand #Food #Supermarket #Legislation

The township economy is a worth a whooping R750 billion. There are around 50,000 out-of-home fast food outlets in townships, which generate around R90 billion in revenue. South Africans earn between R20 billion and R40 billion per year in backroom rentals. The spaza shop market is worth R189 billion annually across 100,000 spaza shops. Spaza shop rentals earn R25 billion per year. The informal fast-food market is worth around R50 billion annually across 45,000 outlets. 45,000 licensed taverns and shebeens earn R110 billion per year. The taxi industry earns R50 billion per year.

We all love a cheap meal. And there are few things Singaporeans are prouder of than our hawker centres, where you can get a Michelin-approved main course for less than $5. But who, exactly, is keeping costs low? While researching this article, I found out that hawkers have to fund the 10% discount patrons get through operator apps. “We are just a small business. When we lose 10 per cent whenever the customer pays using the app, that becomes a $30 to $50 loss every day. And over time, it adds up,” says a hawker from Our Tampines Hub who spoke to me on condition of anonymity. They also have to serve budget meals (usually below $3.50 but as low as $2.80 in some Socially-conscious Enterprise Hawker Centres) and meet certain nutritional regulations. But as restaurants, cafes, and eateries around the island adjust their prices to keep pace with inflation, can we still expect hawkers to continue churning out super cheap yet filling meals that don't make a profit? These are some of the questions I explore in this article, with the help of 25 or so hawkers who were kind enough to speak to me. Kf Seetoh, Prof Walter Theseira, Dr Ye Junjia, and Dr Keri Matwick also weighed in on who should be responsible for ensuring hawker food stays affordable, while Ronald JJ Wong gave me a brief crash course in contract law. It is paywall-free so you can read it here: https://lnkd.in/gvxxcUCp Or, if you'd like to appreciate my subeditor's herculean effort of squeezing 2,300 words onto one page, I've attached the PDF of the newspaper clipping below.

Ireland’s consumers remain eager to eat and drink out despite rising costs—but they are demanding full value for their spending. Nearly 9 in 10 consumers have felt an increase in the cost of living over the last year, but cutting visits to the On Premise to save money is a last resort - two thirds would feel either disappointed or lost if they couldn’t eat or drink out. Consumers are chasing value in several more ways. One is by drinking fewer but higher quality drinks on visits to pubs and bars, while others are switching to categories they perceive to offer more value for money. What do these trends mean for spending patterns? Find out more - https://lnkd.in/e5NkYV54 #CGAbyNIQ #Ireland #onpremise #consumerinsights #costofliving #beverageindustry #drinks #marketinsights

From Chroniclelive - looking at what supermarkets can do to tackle the #CostOfLivingCrisis: https://lnkd.in/ePSKqYwi @chroniclelive

A very interesting and timely article, written by Anya Levykh for Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada)'s Pivot magazine. The restaurant industry is facing pressure from all sides at the moment. tiptap is working with restaurants to help with tipping programs that help with employee retention, donation programs which reinforce customer connection as well as employee engagement, and more. If you are in the space and interested in how we can help, reach out to me. #Restaurants #EconomicTrends #Fintech #ContactlessPayments

The UK food to go market is expected to grow 3.5% to a value £23bn in 2024, outpacing its pre-pandemic value by 9.3%.

Came across this really interesting story by Nusra Kalim on the Interim Budget 2024 expectations from Restauranteurs. Now since the Interim Budget is announced, here are my views on it as a restaurant owner: 1. While the overall start-up and entrepreneurship culture is promoted, there is still a lot of ground to cover for the restaurant industry.   2. Ease of business needs to be promoted especially on the licensing front. 3. For small scale restaurants, lack of formal credit input has been a challenge. Raw material procurement sometimes takes a hefty toll on the finances for them.  https://lnkd.in/d6krKHf8 #thecookiedough #budget2024 #restaurant #cafe #business #foodandbeverage #startupindia #india