Succession planning plays an integral role in the continuity of professions and vocations ranging from business to politics, law to medicine, and teaching to engineering. The transmission of skills and values ensures that knowledge built up over generations is not dissipated in situations where the young are not keen on keeping traditions alive, are incapable of doing so, or both. It is welcome therefore that the National Environment Agency (NEA) announced that retiring hawkers will be given financial support while they coach new hawkers to take over their stalls. This is an update on the hawker succession scheme, which matches retiring hawkers with new entrants to the profession. The goal is to enable older hawkers to teach and pass on their recipes to aspirants, as their family members might not be interested in continuing the trade.

This is a practical way of keeping alive the culture of food in Singapore's hawker centres, which the NEA commends as a "unique combination of food, space and community" that "has evolved into a microcosm of Singapore's multicultural society". Many hawker dishes originated in the culinary traditions of the immigrant groups that settled in Singapore. Over time, those preparations evolved from their foreign origins to become distinctive local dishes that contributed to Singapore's food heritage.