Cereal Killer Cafe
Cereal Killer Cafe was a café situated on Brick Lane in Spitalfields, London that served branded breakfast cereals. It was the first cereal-themed café in the United Kingdom. It announced the closure of its UK stores on 8 July 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dubai store remains open as of 2022. Development. Identical twins Alan and Gary Keery, from Belfast, came up with the idea of selling breakfast cereal after experiencing a morning hangover during a lunch break in Shoreditch and craving a "sugary cereal fix". The brothers were initially dissuaded from  pursuing the project but continued after conducting their own market research. Inspired by established cereal cafes in the United States and the premise of the 2007 film "Flakes", they went about asking consumers on the streets whether or not they would buy into the concept. They discovered that more than half of the people they had asked would consider visiting their cafe. Funding for the proposal came from a business loan following an unsuccessful £60,000 crowdfunding attempt on Indiegogo. They claimed they found it difficult to rent a location based on their business venture but eventually settled on an  old video store. Business. The two-storey café was situated on Brick Lane, near Shoreditch, and employed eight staff. The interior was designed to reflect a retro style with exposed brickwork, formica furniture and 1980s and '90s music. Among the decor were novelty cereal boxes, vintage milk bottles and other cereal related memorabilia. The cafe offered more than 100 different varieties of global cereal brands, 12 kinds of milk and 20 toppings. It also sold coffee, toast and poptarts. In 2014 the brothers were challenged by Channel 4 over the price of their bowls of cereal in Tower Hamlets. After  being told the London borough had some of the highest rates of poverty in the country, Gary denied this was the case and said his cereal was "cheap for the area" before refusing to continue with the interview. Media commentary ranged from praise of their entrepreneurship from Boris Johnson to criticism pointing at gentrification around Shoreditch. In response, the brothers wrote an open letter to the broadcaster on Facebook, claiming the reporter "didn’t even pay me for the cereal, which you could so easily afford with your overpriced River Island suit”. By 2017 the brothers had opened cereal cafes  in Birmingham, Dubai, Kuwait and Jordan. In later interviews, the brothers have also claimed people thought of the brothers as "geniuses" and claimed the 2015 anti-gentrification protests in Shoreditch were a "hate crime" against them and protestors ignored chain businesses and luxury real estate developments.