Vegetarian stalls

Hi Sir,

 

I’m a vegetarian. Most of the time, I find it difficult to find vegetarian stalls whenever I need a meal. Be it at coffee shops, food courts, etc..

 

Sometimes when I pass by a place, and I know of a vegetarian stall nearby, I will walk over.

To my disappointment, there are many vegetarian stalls being closed down at various places and I got to find non-vegetarian food stalls with vegetarian food.

It is more disappointing when you see a big food court with so many stalls and can’t find a single vegetarian choice.

 

When there is no choice, I got to go elsewhere and search which is inconvenient especially with non-vegetarian accompanies (since they already have choices and not nice for them to keep following me for the search) or when I’m quite tired and just want a meal or it’s raining heavily etc..

 

Usually if there is no vegetarian food stall in a particular food place, the highly possible chance to have a vegetarian meal is from the mixed vegetable rice (饭菜) stall which has meat, vegetables with rice. But commonly, the choices are very little. If they have no potatoes, bean curd, non leafy type etc., the person probably can/will only buy 2 green vegetables with rice. If the person somewhat can only eat at the same place everyday due to time wise, and meet such situation, it will be quite depressing due to very little choice of food and bringing own food may not be convenient.

 

I hope maybe something can be done to help improve such situations especially for those vegetarians who need to travel different places for work often. When they have a short lunch break, and the nearest vegetarian place is very far, it will be a problem.

 

 

I have some humble suggestions:

 

1. Not all food places have vegetarian food stalls. Those which have closed down may find it difficult to maintain the rental fees especially vegetarians are the minority. Maybe the vegetarian stall owners could have lower rate rental fees or subsidiaries to help them. Maintaining current vegetarian stalls in Singapore may not be enough to cater to most vegetarians, such idea may also attract people to do such business if they already have in mind but afraid of low number of customers. If budget wise, maybe only those owners who can’t hit a certain income, will be able to get such subsidiaries.

 

2. There are some places where there are quite a number of vegetarian stalls beside each other.Maybe some allocation can be done to allow only a certain number of such stalls to operate within a certain zone.Thus, hopefully, vegetarian stalls can be spread evenly in Singapore in the future which is more accessible.

 

3. Most of the stalls like the beef noodles, fried kway tiao, western food stalls are commonly seen in the food places and hardly have any vegetarian choice. If they could come out with some vegetarian food, example vegetarian noodles with mushroom, fried beehoon with vegetarian popiah, vegetarian spaghetti respectively, will be good. If each stall could have at least one vegetarian food, even without a pure vegetarian stall there, at least the vegetarians who visit there would have some choices. Such stall owners may be entitled a small encouraging subsidiaries or so.

 

 

By “promoting” vegetarian eating may not only for the vegetarians. There are some people who will eat vegetarian meals during the 1st and 15th day of the lunar month. It will also be convenient for them. Even omnivores could be having meal at those stalls. Hopefully the government could think of ideas and help promoting of vegetarian food stalls opening. After all, it is about solving the basic necessity of some human needs with ease. (“Go Green Campaign”).