Super market: Food & Environmental Hygiene Department Senior Administrative Officer Bella Mui tells news.gov.hk how the Government is boosting the appeal of wet markets.

More diversified services, such as promotion activities and workshops, are now available at wet markets, with over 90% of participants finding the activities useful.

Noting about one-third of households usually buy food from wet markets, Food & Environmental Hygiene Department Senior Administrative Officer Bella Mui said the activities, as part of the department's new initiative to enhance services and draw new customers, are necessary to meet customer demand.

A Planning Department survey completed in October found 74% of the 5,895 households surveyed usually buy food from wet markets and 25.4% from supermarkets. Their major reasons for shopping at markets are "more convenient location" (42.1%), "fresher food" (36.8%), "wider variety of food" (30.6%) and "lower prices" (23.1%).

Diversified services

Miss Mui said in view of competition from other shops and supermarkets, wet markets have to offer more diversified services.

"To attract new customers, wet markets have to boost their image and offer diversity, apart from maintaining their traditional strengths in fresh produce retailing. In this regard, we have set up a market promotion team in 2004 and launched a wide range of activities," she said.

Since the latter half of 2004, the department has run large-scale Chinese New Year functions and thematic workshops on Chinese tea art, Chinese soups, meat cooking and food hygiene. Other promotion activities, including lucky draws, photo-taking and menu design contests, as well as roving exhibitions, have also been held. A total of $3.4 million has been spent on activities run in 2005-06.

Miss Mui said: "The themes of these activities are chosen based on products available at wet markets or customers' interests. Contests usually attract more students while housewives and the aged prefer workshops more."

Overwhelming response

Among the activities held, she said Lunar New Year functions, cooking workshops and seminars on healthy eating were most welcomed by customers. The massage and beauty workshop held at four public markets in October and November last year also received overwhelming responses.

"We will ask participants to fill in questionnaires after each event. For most of the activities, more than 90% of the participants feel satisfied with the events and find them useful," Miss Mui said.

"The activities have successfully retained wet markets' existing customers. To woo new customers from different strata, we have to broaden the range and content of activities. Publicity on these events also needs to be strengthened to drive home messages on the diversified services available at wet markets."

New series

To attract customers with different interests, workshops on floral arrangement and horticulture will be held at six public markets from April 7 to May 9.

For cooking workshops, Miss Mui said similar activities will be held but with a different theme. As workshops on cooking beef and pork were run, other foods, such as seafood and poultry, will be the themes of future workshops.

Apart from holding promotion activities, facilities and management will be improved to enhance wet market's attractiveness.