Singapore Widens Work Permit Hiring for F&B: New NTS Occupations from September 2026

Singapore's food and beverage (F&B) employers are getting a wider pool of Work Permit hires to choose from. From 1 September 2026, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is adding eight new occupations to the Non-Traditional Source (NTS) Occupation List, and four of them sit squarely in F&B: food and drink stall assistants; kitchen assistants; waiters; and butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers.

For employers who have been limited to Malaysia, the People's Republic of China (PRC), North Asian Sources (NAS), or resident hires for these roles, and who have found resident hires hard to come by, this is a genuine new sourcing channel, not a minor policy tweak.

What's changing on 1 September 2026

Four Food Services occupations join the NTS Occupation List:

• Food and drink stall assistants

• Kitchen assistants

• Waiters

• Butchers, fishmongers and related food preparers

Why this matters more than it looks

Before 1 September 2026, these four F&B roles were not on the NTS Occupation List at all. That meant Work Permit holders from the nine NTS countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand) were categorically excluded from hiring into them. The only eligible sources were Malaysia/PRC/NAS Work Permit holders, or resident workers, a pool that has consistently been hard for F&B employers to fill.

From 1 September 2026, employers get a third lane: NTS Work Permit holders, on top of the existing options. It doesn't add more Malaysian candidates specifically, but for employers whose actual constraint is total headcount, not nationality, it's a real expansion of who they can hire.

Who's eligible to hire under this expansion

To hire an NTS Work Permit holder into one of these new F&B occupations, a business needs:

• A valid Singapore Food Agency (SFA) Food Shop or Supermarket licence, held under the business's own name as registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA)

• A Services-sector Work Permit account with MOM

The rules that come with it

NTS Occupation List hires come with standing conditions that apply across the whole list, not just the new roles:

• An 8% NTS sub-Dependency Ratio Ceiling (sub-DRC), capping how much of an employer's workforce can be NTS Work Permit holders under this list

• A minimum fixed monthly salary of $2,000 for each NTS Occupation List hire

• The worker is tied to the stated occupation on their Work Permit. For example, a worker hired as a food/drink stall assistant cannot simply be redeployed as a kitchen assistant without updating their Work Permit terms.

Not brand new: cooks have had a narrower path since 2023

If this sounds familiar, it's because MOM already opened one F&B role to NTS countries. Since 1 September 2023, F&B businesses holding a valid SFA Food Shop licence could hire NTS Work Permit holders as cooks for Indian restaurants specifically, sourced from India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The 1 September 2026 expansion is broader: four new occupations, not restricted to a single cuisine, open to workers from all nine current NTS countries.

Part of a bigger widening, not a one-off

This F&B expansion did not happen in isolation. MOM has widened NTS hiring on two fronts in 2026:

• 1 June 2026: Bhutan, Cambodia, and Laos were added as NTS source countries, bringing the list from six countries to today's nine.

• 1 September 2026: eight new occupations, including the four F&B roles above, join the NTS Occupation List.

Manpower Minister Dr Tan See Leng announced the occupation expansion at the Committee of Supply on 3 March 2026, calling it the most significant widening of the NTS Occupation List since it was introduced in 2022.

What F&B employers should do now

1. Check that the business's SFA licence is current and registered under its own ACRA name. This is the gatekeeping requirement for hiring under this expansion.

2. Confirm a Services-sector Work Permit account is in place with MOM before September, so applications can be submitted from day one.

3. Budget for the $2,000 minimum fixed salary and factor the 8% sub-DRC into total headcount planning, especially if NTS workers are already employed elsewhere in the business.

4. Start candidate sourcing early. Sourcing, medical checks, and Work Permit processing for NTS countries typically take several weeks from application to arrival.

Employers who have been stuck choosing between a small pool of Malaysian applicants and hard-to-fill resident vacancies now have a third option worth building into hiring plans ahead of the September opening.

Read next: How to Hire a Foreign Worker in Singapore: Step by Step