Challenging the casual-dining segment
Although the fast-casual industry is booming, co-founder Kaleb Harrell says he and Hawkers’ other partners—Allen Lo, Danny Ho and Wayne Yung—decided not to go the fast-casual route for two reasons: one, because they believed consumers will never stop wanting a full-service experience at dinner, and two, because they thought casual dining needed a revamp. Hawkers “is not casual dining in the sense of what our parents knew as casual dining,” Harrell says.
The concept serves a menu of Asian street food-style small plates in convivial settings complete with open kitchens, Asian newspaper-covered tables and shelves lined with Asian ingredients. At Hawkers, customers don’t “just sit down, order one entree, have the same flavor for an hour and leave. Instead, they have 10 different dishes with 10 different flavor profiles, the palate is continuously being excited, and they’re continuously being influenced by the food, the interior and all these different things to create a whole experience.”