Typical service hours at a Singapore hawker stall would be either breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner--not all three. This particular one is open from 11 AM to 8 PM [1], which is perhaps one hour longer than typical.

If the proprietor does his own shopping, he may start at 5-6 AM and finish clean-up at 8:30 PM, for a "workday" of about 15 hours. There may have been some respite pre-Michelin but now it should be just an hour or two to nap before service begins.

An hour commute each way is not rare for modern hawkers, who in times past might have worked near home for convenience or in the business district for more customers. Now they have to work where the rent is low--and rent inevitably ratchets up as revenue does. Some landlords in Singapore install CCTV at the till to track receipts and make sure they get their pound.

Given the reported increase of only 20% production (180 chickens up from 150), this stall's incredible journey could come to an end when its lease comes up for renewal.

[1] https://guide.michelin.sg/en/2016-guide/hong-kong-soy-sauce-...

Based on my impression of the hawker trade in Singapore, this is pausible. I am guessing his 17 hours probably consists of the following:

2-3 hours of food preparation in the early morning. 12 hours of manning his stall. The remaining hours for commuting and other work things maybe.

It is likely with the michelin star he can work fewer hours. He can choose to close his stall once he sells all his meat.

It is a hard way of making a living.

The article already states that he has a line of up to 100 people to eat his food. I'm not sure finding customers is his problem.

He will likely be able to raise money now though

I imagine that he was asked to describe his day and someone generated the number from that, which might've been exaggerated, might've included things like getting dressed, commute, "thinking about menu changes before bed", etc. The story is not better served by a modest number, after all.

Many of us would have days and weeks of high working hour counts, but very rarely would it be sustained for many months on end.

Well he does food service, which is generally really busy during lunch and dinner, and almost dead outside of those times, so even if he's present for 17 hours, I bet there's some downtime. I know when I worked fast food there was times we kept busy by playing stupid games like hide and seek in the restaurant.

Yeah, it's still work, but it's probably not a hard, strenuous job for all 17 hours of the day.

It's quite plausible. However, it's also common for successful hawker stall proprietors to hire staff to do much or even all of the work for them, and since it's essentially a cash-only business, it's easy to avoid taxes for a good chunk of your earnings.

A good example of this is 328 Katong Laksa, once Singapore's most famous hawker stall, which has fragmented into at least half a dozen competing variants: one's at the original location, one has the license to the name, some are run by the original dude's family, etc.

I don't know of anyone who has done it for 35 years but most small business owners I know in competitive industries like restaurants work at least 12-14 hours a day, often taking only a few days off a month. Perhaps this has to do with the higher cost of living in their areas but it's pretty well accepted that small business owners and sole proprietors generally work a lot more than regular employees. Due to western labor laws regarding benefits and overtime that is usually the only way they can make it.

I used to eat at a little Chinese place where the owner worked 364 days a year. I told him he should close on Sunday but he said "my customers would miss me".

It says 17 hours a day but it doesn't say anywhere in that article how many days he works, in which case he'd be able to recover (somewhat) on days off.

Most of the food stalls in Singapore and elsewhere are closed one day per week.

In addition to what other people have said, it's feasible that he had a longer sleep schedule- maybe 36 hours instead of 24.

Commuting is part of work as well.

He likely lives within a short walking distance of his stall.