In the late 1960s, the newly formed government of independent Singapore made an attempt at increasing the level of hygiene as well as traffic and noise control by building new hawker centres to house existing street hawkers. As such, in 1968, the Hawkers Department of Ministry of the Environment carried out a registration exercise of some 140 hawkers at the Beauty World Market and Bukit Timah Village market. They were subsequently moved to this new market along with other hawkers from other areas. The new market cost $1.4 million to build and in 1975, the Bukit Timah Food Centre was completed. Some 27 years later, in 2002, the food centre underwent renovation and was officially opened by Dr Wong Kai Yuan, MP for Bukit Timah Constituency, on 8 March 2003.