Introduction:

Street food is a common feature of most cities and towns in Bangladesh. Aside provision of ready-made
instant meals at relatively inexpensive prices, teeming urban dwellers are attached to street foods
because of its gustatory attributes. But street foods are not always hygienic. As most of the people of
cities and towns eat street food, we made a survey in street food and street food business to know how
ethically the vendors/sellers sell their foods to their consumers. We surveyed in Agrabad, Bohoddarhat,
Chawkbazar areas to find information for the report. We got the information from the street food
venders by questionnaire method.

Objectives:
The objectives of this study is to determine do the street food vendors ethically operate their business.

Discussion on findings:
It was observed that the highest concentration of food sellers in Chattagram city, are found in bus
stations followed by busy street corners and street corridors. The street food sellers are also fund
besides schools, college, and university. We surveyed on 10 street food sellers.

We asked them several questions about how are they ethically operating their business. The information
from the questionnaire method are describing in the following:

Question 1: Are the foods hygiene or not?

Answer: everyone said their food are hygiene.

Observation: But our observation is those food are not 100% healthy.

Question 2: Are you cleaning the place of shop regularly or not?

Answer: Three of the vendors accepted that they clean the place everyday. Four of them said that they
clean two days in a week and others ignored the question.

Observation: The sellers who ignored the question do not clean the place

Regularly. Two of them lied as we observed the place

Question 3: The ingredients you are using in food have validity or not?

Answer: All of them agreed.

Observation: We don't think that the ingredients have validity. By observing five street food sellers we
came to understand the ingredients of the food like oil, flour etc. don't have validity.

Question 4: Are you using any chemical such as colors which are unhealthy?

Answer: Two of them agreed that they use food color in food as they sell ice-cream. But they said the
color was healthy. Others refused it.
Observation: As we know street food sellers start their business with small capital and the prices of the
foods are cheap, so the color they use in the foods are not healthy. Because they don't buy expensive
healthy food colors. Hence, our observations understood that the food colors are unhygienic.

Question 5: do you maintain the price with quality and quantity of the food?

Answer: Most of them agreed they maintained the price with quality and quantity of the food.

Observation: Our observation they maintain they price with quantity but not with quality. They use
cheap price ingredients to make the foods. We observed that the ingredients are not hygienic.

Question 6: Do you wash the dishes properly that are you serving to the customer?

Answer: All the 10 sellers agreed at this question

Observation: Only few sellers wash their dishes properly. They use safe water to wash the dishes. Most
of them use the same water to wash the dishes. So that the dishes are not properly washed.

Question 7: Are you cleaning your hand properly and use any hair caps and gloves?

Answer: They agreed they wash their hand properly.

Observation: Four of them do not use any hair cap and gloves. The fruit seller uses gloves. Three fast
food sellers use both hair caps and gloves. Other use nothing. They don’t even wash their hand properly,
that we observed.

Question 8: Do you make the food? If yes what kind of environment you use to prepare the food?

Answer: The fast food seller make some of their foods. They said that they make some of their food in a
health environment.

Observation: They make their foods into their vans. As these businesses locate besides the corners of
the streets, smoke of transportation make the food unhealthy. So it can be said that the environment
they are using is not considerable / acceptable.

Question 9: What do you do with leftover food? Throw or serve to the other customer?

Answer: All of them said they throw the leftover food.

Observation: We saw that two of the vendors serve to the other customers.

Question 10: Do your customers satisfied with your food or not?

Answer: Most of them agreed.

Observation: Day by day people being conscious about their health. So some customers complain about
the food quality that we have observed. Most of them are satisfied as street foods are tasty and cheap.
Recommendations
After the survey we get to know that most of the street food vendors are not performing their job
ethically. At present, street food vendors are gaining increasing recognition as a necessary element of
daily urban life. So the vendors should perform their job ethically so that the consumers of street foods
as well as the society can be benefited through their service.

There are some solution that the street food vendors can/should use to provide best services which are
ethical:

1. They should clean the place properly and regularly where the business is located. By this, they
can provide hygienic food to the consumers. It's not a tough or expensive task, it is one of the
social services too.
2. They should use safe drinking water. They should also use safe water to wash their dishes and
ingredients. They can safe water by sedimentation, filtering or building. If boiling is troublesome
they can use the other method. Moreover, they can use the tubewell water.
3. It is not possible to make foods 100% bacteria free, but the street food sellers should try to
provide healthy food. They should not use rotten and expired ingredients. It can lead to loose
customers.
4. If the vendors appoint any child labor, they should behave with them politely.
5. They can use dustbin where waste can be thrown.