DEVELOPMENT IN PROGRESS TO STRENGTHEN 24 HOUR HYGIENIC FOOD STALLS IN THE LADKRABANG DISTRICT, BANGKOK

Abstract

Thai Life style has been changed both individual person and family because of work and time competition. This change affects consumer behavior such as the consumption of fast food sold overnight along footpath. Fast food could serve the people requirement because it is easy to buy, convenience, save time, and ready to eat. However, the hygiene standard of 24 hour food stall and food cart needs to be improved. Regarding food-born microbial contamination and consumer safety, the purposes of this research were to develop, design, and create model of 24 hour food stall and food cart in Ladkrabang district, Bangkok. Before the development, the food stall and food cart selling at Ladkrabang night market were surveyed and selected the most four popular food. The data were used to design and create 24 hour food cart model.

From the surveyed result, the most 4 popular food were noodle, chicken-rice followed by spicy salads, fried or grilled food, and fresh-cut fruit, respectively. Moreover, we also gave the information of how to produce food with high hygiene and safety to food seller in order to increase their knowledge for understanding and realizing how to cook safety food for consumers. After that, the selected food carts were designed and created using 12 choices of good manufacturing practices for street food or food stall of Department of Health, Ministry of Public Health. The food safety processing, low cost, and environmentally friendly factors were also considered. From the cost calculation of food cart design and creating model, we found that the cost of noodle cart model was about 40,000 baht which was higher than the others which each cart was about 33,000 baht. The cost of each food cart in this study was higher than general food cart in market. This was due to food contacted-surface stainless steel, polycarbonate sheet roof and a strong board wall, materials used and inside of the food cart consisted of drawers and a sink with water-drained tube. The food cart was also covered with sieve to protect insects and animals. We suggest that building the food cart in massive volume could reduce the cost as mentioned above. After the food cart model was built, its capacity and consumer acceptability were estimated. The food carts were tested at cafeteria of Faculty of Industrial Education, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang. The result showed high consumeracceptability (95.7%).