It has been reported that there are over 1,000,000 food vendors in Thailand.
I am not sure how you could even remotely count them all but I think the number is much higher.
Food vending is the only financial life-line for these folks.
Food vending is a tough go.
From getting up early each morning, to gathering the ingredients, cooking the food and carrying all the food and setting up to sell. Then tearing it all down, carrying back home, cleaning all the pots and pans. It is a hard task. A task that goes on and on, 7 days a week, for their entire lifetimes.
Food vendors are also tasked with how much food to make each day. Any unsold food will either get eaten at home or be a complete financial loss.
Foods with coconut milk and other ingredients can spoil easily.
Only through years and years of experience do these vendors know how much to cook each day.
Local Thai markets, have a ton of variety.
Due to that variety, Thai people are not going to eat the same foods 2 days in a row.
They have multiple choices what to buy in the market and the food vendor must calculate that number and not over-make any food, in order not to waste it.
Some foods can be fried and cooked on the spot so it is easier to handle the demand and waste.
The financial issue for these vendors is that there are good days and they are bad days when they do no sell as much as they expected or needed to sell.
But life has to go on and these vendors march through the same routine everyday of their lives.
It is a very, very hard way to make a living. Very hard.
We as purchasing have all the luxury in the world to buy anything we want to eat from these vendors at extremely low prices.
Yet, many people never even stop to bother how hard these vendors work for such little money.