A new average: Elevating food service design for local Bangkok street food

Due to a rushed lifestyle, limited cooking time and skills, street food which is tasty, relatively cheap and available everywhere has become quintessential in low- to middle-income. Thai urban everyday dining. Unfortunately this convenient street food dining usually comes with throwaway food containers creating unsustainable consumption. Moreover, these independent street food businesses have been confronted inevitably with cut-throat competition from powerful domestic and international chain restaurants as well as other food service-oriented businesses with far better strategies and practices. This paper investigates how design can lead to a sustainable product service system (PSS) that fits accordingly to its situated culture. Two undergraduate service system design projects, "Like Dish" and "Pinto Boy" were examined within the context of sustainability as well as social and cultural human factors. The key findings could contribute innovatively towards sustainable PSS design. The centralized management system utilized in both projects not only makes Thai street food service environmentally, economically and socially sustainable but also enhances stakeholders’ needs, resource sharing, logistics, management, community interaction and collaboration as well as small-scale local business competitiveness.