My Pet Peeve #1: Celebrity Endorsements on Food Stalls

Medium wouldn't allow me to post my writeups there so I'm posting it here instead. 
UPDATE: Now available on Medium as of 16th March. Click here to read on Medium.

Hi guys, this is my first time doing such a writeup. This series is inspired by my writer friend who also discussed about what he dislikes. The topic I’ll be discussing may turn out to be controversial, but I don’t mean to throw shade at anyone in this writeup. I just needed to express my thoughts out on a particular thing, so here goes.

You know what I dislike? Celebrity endorsement on food stalls. To start off, it’s a rather unusual topic to discuss about and I know you guys will be surprised by it. Hear me out, there are detrimental side effects to celebrity endorsement on a food stall.

DISCLAIMER: Eating or patronising is no problem. Just that such endorsements may negatively impact a food stall.

On the surface, it may seem that such endorsements on food stalls can boost its popularity, attracting more people to patronise the endorsed stall, thus it was expected that the profits will be boosted. The main reasons a celebrity may endorse a food stall can vary from the stall owner’s culinary skills or how delicious the food is. But I would like to dive in deeper to discuss about how the negative impacts a celebrity endorsement can affect the food stall in the long run.

My short stint as a cashier. Glitches like this rarely happens...

I used to work in a noodle stall that was then just recently celebrity-endorsed in late 2018 after my national examination. Here’s the back story; at around October 2018, the said stall was ‘pitted’ against another noodle stall for the “Best Minced Meat Noodle” title by a certain channel, purely based on online votes from Facebook and Instagram which the votes then will be collated from both platforms to determine which stall is the winner of the said title. It just happened that the stall I used to work at got the stamp of celebrity endorsement, but by accident. On that channel’s Facebook page, it shows an image the apprentice’s stall that was supposed to get the stamp of endorsement. In reality, the celebrity from that channel went to the master’s stall (which is the stall I used to work at) to give him the stamp of endorsement instead of the supposed apprentice’s stall. It just so happened that the master was going to open his then second branch at another location, so I guess it was a double blessing for him… while it lasted. Before the stall was being endorsed by that celebrity, the cheapest noodle set on the menu then was $5 (the price was seemingly reasonable before the increase). After the endorsement, the cheapest noodle set has increased to $6 while retaining the same portion. Because of the celebrity endorsement, the landlord used this chance to increase the rental fees of every stall in that coffee shop, hence increasing the price of their food items.

During the first few weeks after being endorsed by that celebrity, the noodle stall that I used to work at was very busy. We worked tirelessly to serve the seemingly endless queue of people that just come in, one after another. The customers didn’t really care about the expensive price of the noodle set then (yes, my friends, $6 is already expensive in a coffee shop/hawker centre/food court), they’re there just for a delicious bowl of noodles even if it doesn’t come cheap. But after a few months since the endorsement, the number of customers started to decline gradually. Many people just aren’t willing to pay such a high price for a noodle set when they could use the same amount of money to pay for other food and a drink. The reason for the high price? Yes, celebrity endorsement causes rental fees to increase, hence increasing price of food items. Most people’s wages do not change as often so they’ll rather eat much more affordable alternatives than the same food simply because its expensive.

Because of the drop of number of customers simply due to not wanting to pay a luxury for just a noodle set, the noodle stall earned lesser profit. This caused the master to source for cheaper suppliers (in other words cut costs) and decrease the portion ever so slightly to offset the decrease in profit. Cheaper suppliers and smaller portions could mean inferior quality, hence a drop in standard means a further decrease in customers… which in a worst case scenario leads to closing down their stall. Sadly, in the last 2 months, that has already happened to two stalls that the celebrity endorsed. Currently, the stall that I used to work at is still surviving, even if the future is uncertain.

Celebrity endorsement, more arrogant stall owners?

At the end of the day, celebrities do not entirely play a part in a food stall’s downfall due to their endorsements. Some stall owners can get too cocky simply because the celebrity boosted their popularity. Initially, they are more committed to give their customers the best quality, but after a while they slackened their standard gradually after the craze as they assume their cooking is satisfactory enough to please their customers. They might also increase the prices of their food items by themselves in hopes of more profits, which in the long run will pose detrimental effects on their stall. In other words, don’t let arrogance take over you and your business. Otherwise you’ll put yourself at a losing end.

Should I become a hawker one day and got my stall endorsed by a celebrity, I’ll try to maintain the prices of my food as long as possible without factoring inflation of goods and landlords raising the rental fees.

Celebrity endorsement on one hand can help to boost popularity of a food stall, which helps the stall owners to increase their profit temporarily, but on the other hand can cause the price of food items to increase, hence losing their customers in the long run. Just leave it to the food bloggers, or even any Tom, Dick and Harry to comment about the food and do the word-of-mouth advertisements. I’m sure the stall owners would well appreciate it and so do their customers as well. I just don’t feel the need for celebrities to endorse food stalls as that’ll only inflate the stall owner’s ego, and increase the prices of their food items, right...? I’m also actually glad that the other food stall did not get the stamp of celebrity endorsement because their prices stayed similar and affordable for the longest time, but theirs only increased recently due to non-endorsement reasons. I just don’t want all the good hawker food to disappear slowly because of the negative impacts brought by celebrity endorsements.