Singapore’s dining scene — long touted as a global food capital where hawker stalls, neighbourhood cafés and inventive fine-dining all coexist — has been going through a reckoning. The last 18 months have seen an unusually high number of permanent exits, even as new brands (including large overseas chains and a wave of F&B operators from China) open here. The churn is reshaping not just menus and neighbourhoods, but how Singaporeans experience public life.
A snapshot of the F&B losses
The scale is easy to miss until you see the numbers. In 2024 some 3,047 F&B businesses shut their doors in Singapore — the highest annual total since the mid-2000s. That wave has continued into 2025: analysts and international reporters note the monthly average of F&B closures has risen (roughly 307 in 2025 vs about 254 in 2024), a sign that closures are outpacing recent years’ norms.
Among recent, high-profile exits were longstanding and much-loved names:
- Ka-Soh, the heritage zi-char and fish-head noodle stall with an 85-year lineage, announced it would close its final outlet in late September 2025.
- The Privé Group, which once ran multiple popular casual dining outlets across town, shuttered all of its restaurants with immediate effect on 31 August 2025.
Other notable commercial exits of 2025 included international names leaving or downsizing their footprint: Burger & Lobster closed its Jewel Changi outlet earlier in the year, and global quick-service / fast-casual concepts such as Eggslut also exited the Singapore market.
Fine-dining closures added to a sense that even established, critically-acclaimed places are under strain. A whopping nine 1-star Michelin restaurants have shuttered this year, including Chef Kang’s, Matera, and Sushi Kimura.
So who’s moving in?
At the same time as old names disappear, new outlets keep arriving. The pattern is mixed, but two clear themes stand out:
Big international chains are expanding into Singapore
Several high-profile Western fast-casual brands have targeted Singapore in 2025–26. US chains like Chick-fil-A publicly signalled an entry in late 2025, while Chipotle has announced plans to open in Singapore as it begins an Asian push. These brands bring scale, capital and a repeatable formula that suits malls and high-footfall locations.
A noticeable influx of mainland-China F&B operators
Analysts tracking market entry counted dozens of Chinese brands and well over a hundred outlets entering Singapore in recent years: Momentum Works estimated roughly 32 Chinese F&B brands operating 184 outlets by mid-2024 — many of those openings concentrated since the pandemic. These include hotpot, mala concepts, grilled/fish-and-skewer formats and regional “hometown” restaurants from provinces such as Sichuan, Hunan and Guangdong.
The Chinese brands (and other newcomers) are visible in city centre dining clusters and tourist corridors (Bugis, Chinatown, Orchard, etc). They’re also present in neighbourhood malls — many of the imported concepts target lower-rent, high-local-footfall sites.
Hotpot chains and mala/skewer concepts have been particularly prominent because their model — group dining, relatively high per-table spend and standardisable supply chains — adapts well to a Singapore market eager for novelty and group dining experiences.
Why this combination of exits and entries matters
There are three linked dynamics at work:
Cost and margin pressure: Rising rents, wages and input costs — coupled with a cautious consumer who now spends more on travel and less on frequent dining out — have squeezed many independents and mid-range operators. Large chains, with deep pockets, centralised supply chains and franchise models, can absorb or plan for tighter margins better than lone proprietors.
Replacement by scalable formulas: Where a family-run zi-char or a unique neighbourhood café closes, the vacant unit is often attractive to a well-funded chain or a formulaic concept that can roll out quickly. That accelerates a shift from idiosyncratic, local flavour to standardised, scalable dining formats.
Dietary and demographic change: Singapore’s population mix — incoming migrants from across Asia, affluent locals, tourists and a youth culture hungry for novelty — creates demand for both global brands and new regional Chinese concepts. Operators see Singapore as a beachhead for further Asian expansion.
What this means for Singapore’s dining culture
The effects are not only culinary; they are civic. First of all, they erode our cultural memory. Long-running eateries — the zi-char tables, the old café stools, the neighbourhood hawker stalls that carried family recipes — act as informal archives of community history. When they disappear, so do places where cross-generational stories are told and retold. The loss of Ka-Soh is an emblematic example.
Restaurants and cafés are vital third places — neutral grounds for social mixing outside home and work. If mid-priced independents vanish and are replaced by either premium dining or homogenised chain outlets, there are fewer accessible meeting spots for everyday life.
Chains prioritise consistency and scale; they do not always foster culinary experimentation the way small independent kitchens do. Over time that can narrow the city’s gastronomic vocabulary, making Singapore feel less distinct as a place with its own, layered food story.
Let’s not forget the social consequences. Food is one of Singapore’s shared symbols — it knits together different ethnicities and classes. A less diverse foodscape can reduce spontaneous cross-social encounters and diminish civic belonging. It also concentrates risk: a monocultural market is less resilient to shocks than one with many small, adaptive players.
We need to find a good balance
Change and renewal are normal in vibrant cities. New concepts — local start-ups, ethical cafés, exciting international arrivals — can enrich the landscape. The problem emerges when market pressures skew renewal toward models that reduce diversity and make it harder for small players to survive.
While new entrants keep palates interesting and consumer choice wide, the rapid loss of independents and heritage names erodes the civic fabric those places supported — the third places, the cultural memory, and the everyday encounters that quietly make Singapore a singular food city. If preserving that role matters, policy, and community action will need to steer renewal toward a more plural future, not a purely corporate one.
