Innovative techniques, roaming robots offer new experience for visitors at new Jurong West hawker center

Roaming robots are one of the major highlights of the hawker center, and visitors will also get an incentive of 20 cents if they return used crockeries and cutleries at designated areas

hawker centre
hawker centre Reuters

A new hawker center working with a holistic approach has been opened in Jurong West, on Sunday, October 08, 2017. The center with a seating capacity of 500 has 34 cooked food stalls and 14 market slab stalls.

Dr Amy Khor, the Senior Minister of State, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources & Ministry of Health inaugurated the center with Member of Parliament for West Coast GRC Patrick Tay and Cedric Foo, the member of Parliament for Pioneer constituency.

Patrick Tay, after the inaugural ceremony, told that the new hawker center will turn out to be a neutral place where residents can enjoy some quality time and enjoy meals together. He also lauded the social enterprise hawker management for providing modern conveniences in the center.

Innovation redefined

The newly opened venture, managed by 'social enterprise Hawker management', makes use of various innovations to ensure a unique experience to the visitors.

One of the major highlights of this hawker center is its incentive system. When a customer places crockeries and cutleries at the designated areas, he or she will get 20 cents in return as incentives.

The hawker center is also equipped with three tray-carrying roaming robots. The presence of robots in the center is playing a crucial role in attracting more kids to the place, which is expected to increase the rush in the coming days.

The hawker center accepts both cash and cashless payment.

A noble initiative from Koufu

The hawker center is the subsidiary of food center operator Koufu, which is working on a non-profit approach. Each food stall in the hawker center sells two regular portions of dishes at $2.80.

David Yang, the CEO of Hawker Management told that roaming robots and cashless payment systems are in use in some Koufu centers. Yang added that the management is offering all kinds of support to the stall owners so that the hawker culture will be preserved and the traditional taste of Singapore will be enjoyed by the future generations too.

"By working together with the community to impart, share and support an environment for the hawker trade to adapt and flourish, we hope to do our part to ensure hawker centers remain a place we hold dear for generations to come," said Yang, Straits Times reports.

READ MORE