January 28, 2026
SINGAPORE – There was a time when all of this would have been done the hard way: 18-hour days that started with a 3am run to the market and ended after an afternoon of physical toil.
Mr Noorman Mubarak still remembers what it was like to chop onions until his eyes watered and to gut fish under the hungry gaze of the neighbourhood cats.
And that was all in the service of one stall. The 47-year-old now runs a small empire of 34 stalls under his hawker brand, Nasi Lemak Ayam Taliwang. But you will no longer find him in the kitchen, working the deep fryer at the crack of dawn.
Food preparation now starts in a 10,000 sq ft central kitchen in Pandan Loop run by Simple Food Solutions. Here, sambal is prepared in a vat, and workers load packets of spices – packaged and weighed in advance – into a vacuum tumbler, where they are infused into chicken thighs in just 45 minutes.
Ordinarily, Mr Noorman would have had to marinate batches of meat overnight in his stall.
The food is then blast frozen – a process that preserves its taste and juices – and stored in a freezer, where it waits to be distributed to hawker centres and coffee shops. With day-to-day operations running on their own, Mr Noorman has more time to focus on strategising, innovating and trying to expand.
For the third-generation hawker, centralisation makes expansion possible. His goal is 50 profitable outlets in the next two years, then 200 in the future, likely in overseas markets like Indonesia.
He is not one to dream modestly: “I want us to be the McDonald’s of nasi lemak.”
Central kitchens do not have the best reputation at the moment, most notorious in recent weeks for dishing out canteen food that has been lambasted online for its unappetising appearance and occasionally causing gastroenteritis.
But this model does not always result in bland meals and soggy vegetables. In fact, some restaurants argue, an additional facility could help improve the quality of food and steward resources in a more effective manner.
Could central kitchens, then, alleviate the burdens of an industry beset by manpower shortages and rent hikes?
There are many reasons why restaurants and eateries might outsource the preparation of food. The lack of space, for one. Italian restaurant chain Casa Vostra, for example, needs an extra facility to butcher, cure and dry-age meat, turning it into cold cuts like pancetta, salame and bresaola.
“Similarly, using freshly made pasta at each Casa Vostra outlet requires quite a significant back-end operation that we could not achieve without a central kitchen,” says chef-owner Antonio Miscellaneo, 53.
Sambal for Nasi Lemak Ayam Taliwang being prepared in bulk at a 10,000 sq ft central kitchen in Pandan Loop. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
Typically, a central kitchen makes the most sense when a business has more than a few outlets and consistency becomes a chief concern. This is the case for Rumah Makan Minang and Hoe Nam Prawn Noodles, two heritage brands that operate three and eight outlets respectively.
At the central kitchen used by Nasi Lemak Ayam Taliwang, consistency is guaranteed by science: A machine tests the pH level, viscosity and salinity of all items prepared at the central kitchen.
“If we tested the items at stall level, it would be more challenging because then we’d have to rely on the taste and experience of staff, which can be very subjective. So we’ve decided to control it in a more scientific way,” says Mr Noorman.
Likewise, Hoe Nam Prawn Noodles no longer relies on individual expertise. Founded by Mr Png Kim Soon in the 1970s, it was sold in 2020 to Micro 2000, an IT company that parlayed its experience in optimisation and data analysis into culinary efficiency.
An automatic noodle-cooking station was added to the kitchen in Tai Thong Crescent, recipes were consolidated over three months of documentation, and the brand was exported to malls across the island, from Changi City Point to Northshore Plaza.
There was only one thing Mr Brandon Ng, group managing director of Micro 2000, had no intention of changing.
“Hoe Nam has been around for nearly 50 years, so customers recognise the taste of its soup. That was something we didn’t want to change, even as we tried to modernise the rest of the business.”
He was not immediately successful. In 2023, when Hoe Nam was starting to expand, customers complained that the taste of the soup varied from outlet to outlet.
The solution, he discovered, was to rely on a central kitchen, where the prawn stock would be cooked for over 10 hours and then distributed by an in-house logistics team whenever required the following day.
So far, it seems to have worked.
“With our current outlets, we haven’t received any feedback that the quality of soup differs from one outlet to another,” he says. “In fact, when we opened at Aperia Mall, there were some customers who came every single day for a whole week.”
Though there is a chef based in the central kitchen to help with recipe development, the individual kitchens have no need for such expertise. There, standard operating procedure takes over. Each employee is assigned to a specific station and given a specific job. After just two weeks of training, they are good to go.
It can also be easier to hire foreign workers to man a central kitchen, says Ms Gigi Tsakiris, 34, co-founder of Greek restaurant chain Blu Kouzina.
Some of these kitchens fall under the manufacturing sector, with a dependency ratio ceiling of 60 per cent, which means they can hire three foreign employees for every two Singaporean workers.
In contrast, restaurants are considered part of the services sector, and the total number of Work Permit and S Pass holders employed by businesses in this category cannot exceed 35 per cent of their total workforce.
Besides, a central kitchen means greater flexibility and can work independent of a physical store. That is the gamble that Mr Kelvin Khoo, 46, and Ms Joen Chin, 39 are taking.
After their stall, Joy of Fish – located until December in a Joo Chiat Place coffee shop – suffered from low footfall, they cut their losses and switched to a central kitchen model.
The 200 sq ft unit the couple has secured in Bishan is nearly double the size of their Joo Chiat stall and will churn out fish-fillet bento sets under an online delivery model.
In addition to fish, chicken and beef will be added to the menu for greater variety. Their target audience will be working professionals in the Central Business District, deliveries and corporate events.
“Overall, it’s cheaper than setting up a similar-sized stall in a coffee shop or opening a shop. After considering rental, renovation and the process of picking out a suitable venue, sticking to a central kitchen is more effective if we’re focusing on a delivery business,” says Mr Khoo.
A central kitchen, however, might not be right for everyone.
Mr Darryl Tong, 33, is the founder of Origanics, a vegan hawker brand with stalls in Woodleigh, Buangkok and at the National University of Singapore.
Despite his growing portfolio, he has yet to opt for a central kitchen because he does not have the budget for one, nor the scale of demand that necessitates bulk preparation.
These kitchens, after all, do not come cheap. Mr Aloysius Anton Wee, a lecturer at Republic Polytechnic’s School of Hospitality, estimates that to supply a dining chain with multiple outlets across Singapore, it could cost between $20,000 and $30,000 a month to rent a central kitchen space. Equipment costs might fall in the ballpark of $300,000 to $500,000.
The cost of running a central kitchen is so prohibitive that the team behind Blu Kouzina shut theirs in December. Their unit, located in Admiralty, had set them back by more than $50,000 each month. Crippled by falling sales, they could no longer afford the investment.
“People are apprehensive about how they’re spending. For instance, Siglap used to be a very busy location for us, but now, there’s no walk-in traffic at all,” says Ms Tsakiris.
The closure of the central kitchen also means that the company’s food production arm, Olive Grove Kitchens – which used to supply to restaurant chain Wild Honey and grocer Little Farms – is no more.
“If you have big volumes coming in, it’s a different story. But without big volumes, it’s just added cost,” she adds.
And if not used effectively, these kitchens can turn into a resource drain. “A lot of them are not operating at full capacity,” says Mr Dominic Tan, founder of fast-casual Korean restaurant chain Ajumma’s and craft makgeoli bar Odem.
At his central kitchen – a 2,500 sq ft unit that costs around $30,000 a month to rent – workers tend to have an hour of free time at the end of the shift.
“That’s underutilised capacity that we could use to produce for other people or increase our production,” he notes.
He advises businesses to crunch their numbers and decide if it makes sense for them to invest in a central kitchen. The number of outlets is not always the determining factor. A single eatery with substantial profits, for instance, could warrant a central kitchen that a three-outlet business with slimmer margins might not be able to afford.
Those hesitant about committing to a full central kitchen might choose instead to outsource certain areas of production.
In October, Enterprise Singapore launched two initiatives to help food and beverage (F&B) companies manage costs and enhance productivity, based on the Singapore Productivity Centre’s Food Services Productivity Report, which identified centralised food preparation as a critical success factor.
The FoodX programme, intended to help businesses take advantage of shared resources and economies of scale, is one such initiative. During its pilot in 2024, it matched 200 F&B companies with suitable manufacturers.
It is how Mr Sydney Teo, 37, director of Mayson Bakery, was able to add new dishes to his coffee concept, Kopi & Tarts. His team wanted to add chicken curry rice sets to their menu in November 2024, but realised that they were out of their depth.
“These items were not our forte and we had multiple food quality issues when we tried to prepare them on our own,” recalls Mr Teo. “By outsourcing this component of our menu – no doubt there was a premium to pay – it helped to bring up our average spend and provided additional food offerings to customers.”
Mr Eugene Tan, 47, owner of Serangoon BBQ & Curry, a nasi padang chain with outlets in Bishan and North Bridge Road, similarly outsources the preparation of achar and coleslaw to save on time and kitchen space. His marinades are also handled by a third party and delivered to his two outlets in vacuum packs.
“I toyed with the idea of getting the supplier to cook the food and send it over, but I still find that it’s easier for me to do it here,” he adds.
The former teacher comes from a family of cooks. His parents opened the now-defunct Somerset Eating House in 1983 and raised him in the kitchen of their nasi padang stall. It is their recipes he uses in his restaurant, their legacy that is stamped on the food streaming out of the kitchen – literally: their faces are on the bowls.
To make sure the food tastes exactly how he remembers it, manufacturers are sent a list of his go-to ingredients, down to the brand of oyster sauce and sesame oil.
It is a system that has served him well. “In the past, if my father could not work, we had to close the shop for the day.” Now, the kitchen runs on autopilot regardless of who is on shift.
And Mr Tan trusts his suppliers to deliver on quality. “My suppliers are very seasoned, so even if there’s a slight difference in taste, it’s not that far off. In these cases, it’s usually not because they didn’t follow the recipe, but due to seasonality.”
Odem and Ajumma’s Mr Tan, however, has not been so fortunate. He received substandard products on several occasions, even needing to take a particular item off the menu once.
“You can’t really control what goes wrong, and you can’t monitor operations on a day-to-day basis because it’s not your facility. So occasionally, there are errors made or problems with the quality, or new staff might need to be trained,” he says. He stopped outsourcing food production by the end of 2024.
Mr Noorman’s recipes are safeguarded by a non-disclosure agreement. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
“When you outsource, there’s that lack of control, whereas when we do it in-house, if anything goes wrong, we can troubleshoot on the spot rather than wait for it to reach the outlet. Because by the time we discover the issue, it might be too difficult to rectify things.”
There is another snag to consider, especially for fine- and semi-fine-dining establishments. “Their menus change frequently, and the level of precision and required last-minute finishing do not translate well to batch production,” points out Republic Polytechnic’s Mr Wee.
Similar considerations dog eateries of a certain vintage. Can a business built on nostalgia really afford the loss of human touch? Does that bowl of noodles still taste as good if you know it was not prepared by the calloused hands of the original owner but by a nameless, faceless employee in an industrial estate?
“Heritage food brands and hawkers often rely on traditional, labour-intensive methods and the perception that food is cooked fresh on-site. Culinary craftsmanship is a key part of their identity, so centralising production could dilute what makes them unique,” notes Mr Wee.
No surprise, then, that outsourcing is not candidly discussed, even in food circles.
“Everyone wants to seem like he’s staying true to the craft, doing everything in-house by hand. We’re aware of how customers might assume that you’re just reheating food in the kitchen,” says Serangoon BBQ & Curry’s Mr Tan.
“Some customers lament the loss of ‘soul’. They even tell me things like, ‘The food tastes the same as when your parents cooked it, but there’s something missing.’”
To Mr Noorman, the belief that food has to come directly from the founder for it to taste good is nothing more than a flight of fancy.
“It’s like saying that (founding prime minister) Lee Kuan Yew must stay alive forever for Singapore to survive. But he’s been gone for a while now and we’re still doing fine,” he adds.
To him, it comes down to how well the original chef is able to mentor his staff. “I want my students to be better than me,” he says.
He has no qualms about sharing his recipe with third-party partners either. “You can easily go on YouTube and find recipes for similar products. Nasi lemak was not something I invented. The ingredients alone are not what make us unique. But if someone hasn’t already been able to copy exactly what we do, it’s unlikely they will be able to.”
Plus, his recipes are safeguarded by a non-disclosure agreement that prevents his partners who run the central kitchen from replicating the exact dishes for other clients.
To be safe, Ajumma and Odem’s Mr Tan suggests sharing only part of the recipe with suppliers and completing “last-mile” preparations in-house to maintain a higher degree of confidentiality.
Putting the finishing touches in the restaurant’s kitchen also helps to ensure that food is served as fresh as possible, regardless of where and when the cooking process starts. The meats at Serangoon BBQ & Curry are marinated and cooked on-site, as are the noodles at Hoe Nam Prawn Noodle’s outlets.
Mr Ng paid extra attention to the brand’s original location in Tai Thong Crescent. “There was some pressure to keep the original taste and ambience. We don’t want to make the regulars feel like it’s changed, so the only thing we did differently was to add air-conditioning, which I think they appreciate.”
At the end of the day, it is impossible to please everyone. Times are changing and businesses must change with them.
When asked if he misses cooking, Mr Noorman’s answer is sharp and swift.
“It’s not a question of what I miss. It’s about what will create new opportunities for my family,” says the father of three.
“If there’s a need to, I’ll cook, but if not, then there’s no point. Passion is overrated anyway.”