How meal deliveries in Singapore are evolving as home cooking declines

SINGAPORE – In Singapore, where time and space always seem to be in short supply, who really has the wherewithal to chop, boil, braise and whip up a full meal for the whole family? 

In 2015, just 22 per cent of households in Singapore cooked at home almost every day, compared with 49 per cent of respondents in London, Paris and Shanghai, according to furniture giant Ikea’s Life at Home survey. It polled 1,271 households here as part of a larger report that surveyed eight major cities in total.

And yet, Singaporeans have not lost their appetite for home-cooked food.

A 2024 Ikea report that surveyed 38,630 people across 39 countries deduced that Singaporeans are most likely to enjoy eating a home-cooked meal, with 37 per cent of respondents expressing such a preference. The global average, in contrast, was 28 per cent. 

Given these circumstances, one might be tempted to deduce that for tingkat delivery services, which pride themselves on home-style cooking delivered to customers’ doorsteps, business is booming.

Not quite. Despite making a brief comeback during the Covid-19 pandemic, many such companies are living on borrowed time. Faced with a shrinking market, even seasoned players like Mom’s Cooking are counting their days. 

“I’m not sure if my company will be in existence five years down the road. Not simply because we’re not profitable, but because the changing environment makes it extremely difficult for us to operate,” says Kelvin Ong, 55, owner of Mom’s Cooking, a Woodlands-based company that has been delivering meals since 2008. 

At its peak around 2020, it served 2,000 customers a day. That number has waned to around 1,200, rendering one of its two industrial kitchens moot. It charges $115.50+ for three meals for two people delivered over the course of a week, featuring three dishes and one soup. 

With family sizes dropping drastically, over 75 per cent of customers are now two-person households. “My grandmother had 15 children. I have four siblings, but today, you have one to two kids,” says Ong. “And they have plenty of options. They might not want to be stuck eating Chinese food every day.” 

Fellow tingkat delivery company Fatty Daddy Fatty Mummy has observed a similar downward trend, as has Dabba Junction, a credit-based subscription service that specialises in Indian meal deliveries. Prices at Dabba Junction start at $18 for a standard meal, while a six-meal standard plan costs $102.

“We rely on foreign students and working professionals, so demand fluctuates,” says Prajakta Karnik, brand marketing manager of Food Stack Concepts, which runs Dabba Junction. It serves 100 to 150 customers a day, down from over 300 from 2021 to 2022. 

Where once tingkat companies may have served a unique purpose in the food ecosystem, they now have to compete with food delivery platforms like Grab, which provide a surfeit of options for customers. 

“Once the category is framed only as ‘food delivered daily’, it becomes easier to feel interchangeable. That means we cannot compete purely on being the cheapest,” says Tania Ng, 33, co-owner of halal-certified caterer Lagun Sari. 

A taste of home 

For these companies, the nostalgia of their familiar, home-style recipes sets them apart – in some ways, the next best thing for those who no longer have the luxury of dining at their parents’ tables. 

At Mom’s Cooking, the menu is modelled after a Singaporean Chinese household’s, with dishes such as braised sesame chicken, ABC soup, steamed tofu with egg, and stir-fried French beans with ikan bilis.

Some of these recipes are from Ong’s mother, but mostly, there is no real secret to them. “My mother was just a normal housewife. There wasn’t anything too special about her recipes, but we pride ourselves on this simplicity,” he says.  

“It’s very similar to what my mum and helper used to cook,” observes long-time customer Serene Ong, a 58-year-old business development professional. Mom’s Cooking has fed her family of three for close to a decade.

Kelvin Ong describes Mom’s Cooking’s food in soul-stirring terms, packed with an extra dose of “warmth” and “heart”, but cannot attribute these ineffable qualities to any particular ingredient or cooking method. Perhaps, he muses, because Mom’s Cooking delivers its meals day in, day out, customers feel an affinity with the company’s products. The fuzzy name probably helps too.  

Over at Dabba Junction in Kampong Ampat, the kitchen draws inspiration from northern India, rotating between dishes like mutton rogan josh, aloo matar and kadai paneer. Karnik describes its style of cooking as lighter, made with less cream and oil than restaurant fare.

This specific cuisine was picked for its familiarity, and because most of its chefs come from that region. “They’ll cook what they make for themselves,” she says. These homely creations – like dal khichdi, a porridge-like dish made from rice and lentils – find their way onto the menu. 

“A lot of people have told us they love our reliability and the fact that the food tastes like home away from home.” 

Meanwhile, Lagun Sari's offerings might be characterised as Malay home cooking with a sprinkling of other cultural influences – Chinese, Thai, Filipino, Western and more. Developed by an executive chef trained in Malay and Nusantara cooking, a week’s worth of tingkat deliveries might include dishes ranging from ayam semarang to beef adobo. It costs $120+ for a three-meal plan for two people.

“The point is range without losing the home-cooked character,” says Ng. “The base of the dish must feel familiar, like the rempah, the sambal, the sauce, the overall warmth of it. Then the outside influence comes in as an accent, not the main thing.”

Changing demographic 

Such flavours appeal to a wide segment of Singapore society. So, as families – the traditional target audience of these services – tighten their belts, other groups have stepped in to fill the space left by shrinking households. 

Ng, in particular, has noticed a growing segment of adult children ordering on behalf of elderly parents who live separately and prefer home-style food over hawker centre takeaways. 

“(This demographic) used to be a small slice, but is now a meaningful and growing share of our base. The brief is almost always the same: My mother used to cook every day, but cannot any more, and we want food that tastes like home and is safe for her to eat,” she says.

Likewise, though Mom’s Cooking was initially aimed at busy families with young children, Ong has observed an uptick in single professionals among his clientele. In just two years, its proportion of single-person orders has grown from 5 per cent to 15 per cent. 

Consequently, he has introduced portions for solo diners. Prices start at around $87.95+ for three three-dish-one-soup meals for one person, delivered thrice a week. 

Single expatriates like Indrajeet Bhuyan, a 28-year-old cybersecurity engineer, also rely on deliveries from Dabba Junction. 

“When I moved to Singapore four years ago, I could prepare only one or two basic dishes, and eating the same food every day became repetitive and tiring. Cooking also took up a lot of time,” he says. The expat, who hails from Assam, India, has dinner delivered from Monday to Friday.

Operational paradox

But despite budding interest from new customer bases, there are limits to how far these companies can respond to diversifying demand. 

Given Singapore’s ageing population, Ong knows the smart thing to do would be to pivot and cater to the elderly. Such a move, however, presents a new logistical dilemma. 

“Elderly folk tend to sleep really early, which means they might want their food at 4pm or 5pm. So if you deliver around 6pm or 7pm, they might perceive that as late,” he says. 

Besides, Mom’s Cooking, which prepares its food in bulk, is not best placed to meet the dietary requirements of individual seniors. “One customer might require soft food, another might have high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Technically, everything can be done, but at what cost?” 

The main roadblock for his company, though, is the limited supply of delivery riders – a predicament he attributes to high certificate of entitlement prices and Grab’s monopoly on riders.  

The irony of it all is not lost on Ong. “We’re actually turning down orders from customers. It’s kind of funny, right? On one hand, I want to expand the business market, but at the same time, I’m telling customers we don’t have enough resources to service them.”

It is for the same reason he cannot service potentially lucrative estates like Bidadari. “We just can’t find the drivers.”

For other businesses, the main problem is rising food costs. As Singaporeans grow increasingly health-conscious, many tingkat companies are switching to premium ingredients. 

“Healthier Choice-certified oils and fresh ingredients can cost $2 to $5 more than standard commercial alternatives,” says a spokesperson for Fatty Daddy Fatty Mummy, which has eliminated canned and processed ingredients from its inventory. A 10-day Regular Tingkat plan starts at $190+ for two people.

And yet, pivoting in this direction is inevitable for any business hoping to hang on to its slice of the market. “Updating our menu is how we stay relevant, and lots of people want healthy meals,” says Karnik, who is in her 50s. 

Health-maxxing 

These days, however, nutritious food alone may not cut it. The question is not just how healthy your food is, but in what way?

Enter meal prep services: cooked meals delivered chilled to feed you throughout the week. Often, they are accompanied by a breakdown of the following: calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates and protein. 

It is this attention to detail that attracted senior mechanical design engineer Chan Hoong Yew, 49, to meal prep brand Yummy Bros. “For a competitive athlete, a one-size-fits-all healthy meal isn’t enough; the ability to adjust protein, carb and fat ratios is essential for meeting training goals. Although I’ve retired from competition, this dining habit still stays,” says the former competitive dragon boater. For the last eight or so years, he has been ordering from Yummy Bros twice a week. 

A growing number of Singaporeans are starting to share his healthy habits. Since 2020, meal prep brand Yummy Bros has grown by 20 per cent to 30 per cent annually.

“While the pandemic accelerated adoption initially, due to social distancing measures and closure of F&B retail, what’s more telling is that demand for our meal prep service continued to grow even after dine-in options fully returned,” says Gerald Tan, 38, who founded the company with his partners Anson Lim and Ben Leu. 

Their bestsellers are priced from $9.90+ to $10.90+.

“This suggests that meal prep is not just a temporary substitute for eating out, but also a structural shift in how people manage their meals and diets.” 

Utso Bhattacharya, 43, co-founder of meal prep service TSquared Eats, likewise calls the Covid-19 pandemic a watershed moment. Whereas meal prep appealed mainly to bodybuilders and other fitness enthusiasts before 2020, the public now hungers, too, for clean food that also tastes good. 

Of course, the easiest way to meet one’s fitness goals is with steamed chicken breast and broccoli. “But that’s not sustainable,” Bhattacharya says. “People are becoming more and more discerning in terms of flavour and taste. Our food should taste like a normal meal.” 

So, TSquared Eats prides itself on the variety – over 500 recipes across various international cuisines – and quality of its meals. These contain premium proteins like steak or salmon, cooked in ways that retain their succulence even after being warmed up in a microwave. 

Its head chef Siddharth Bauari, 40, reverse-engineers recipes. “Because we know customers will be reheating the meals, we design our cooking methods to retain as much moisture, texture and flavour as possible,” he says.

To achieve this, the team uses precise temperature control, sous vide techniques and rapid blast chilling.

Though the food is prepared in large batches, the kitchen can accommodate certain dietary restrictions, like lactose intolerance and coeliac disease, when requested in advance. A one-week, six-meal plan costs $105.

“If I’m making 400 portions, and maybe 10 of those include dietary restrictions, it’s still manageable,” says Bauari, who, alongside Afshan Thakkar, also co-founded the company.

Customisation goes a step further at Nutrify Meals. Customers pick which proteins, carbs and veggies they want and how much. Portion sizes generally range from 50g to 500g a section, and 50g of tom yum chicken breast costs about $8, for instance.

“This flexibility is important because nutritional needs vary depending on factors such as gender, body type, lifestyle and fitness goals,” says founder Michael Tanri, 29, though he declines to share how the kitchen manages so many different orders. “Just know it’s a long and detailed process of packing and weighing every meal based on each customer’s order.”

An international menu

Tanri’s meals mainly revolve around Asian flavours, namely the kind of food he enjoys eating. So, too, at Yummy Bros, which redesigns local and Asian classics.

“The key is to strike a balance between health and familiarity,” says Tan. “If the flavours are too far from what people are used to eating, they tend to become difficult to sustain over time.” 

Unfamiliar flavours are not a concern for market newcomer Tsuklio, which wants to turn Japanese food into everyday fare for Singaporeans. It starts at $149 a week for a three-day plan designed for two-person households.

While Japanese cuisine is often seen as a treat in Singapore, to be consumed in a restaurant or cafe, Tsuklio says its meals – think beef and daikon stew, or curry pork and beans – are designed for regular family dinners rather than special occasions. 

“These dishes are deeply rooted in everyday meals in Japan. Our test participants responded positively, finding the dishes familiar, comforting and well-suited for daily family dining,” says Kei Maejima, founder and chief executive of Antway Inc, the Tokyo-based food-tech company behind Tsuklio. 

He says the brand received over 3,000 pre-registrations ahead of its launch in Singapore in April, exceeding his expectations. “We see a common core in both Japan and Singapore markets – urban, dual-income households that want to put a proper meal on the table without the stress of daily planning and cooking,” he adds. 

A hassle though it may be, food writer and researcher Gan Chin Lin hopes Singaporeans will not stop cooking. “It’s good to have others take on the labour of cooking sometimes, because historically, cooking has always been a labour that’s meant to be shared, but that doesn’t trample on the notion that we benefit greatly from learning how to cook on our own,” says the 27-year-old.

Losing the ability to whip up homely recipes means losing a way to meaningfully engage with a lot of material culture that is so essential to the Singaporean identity. 

She says: “If we don’t feel like we have any agency in extending this body of culture or even co-authoring how this body of culture will look like in the future, then who will do it?”