Cereal Killer Cafe sold a million £3.20 bowls — the pandemic closed it

Identical twins Alan and Gary Keery, from Belfast, opened the first Cereal Killer Cafe on Brick Lane in east London in December 2014: cereals from around the world served in Nineties-themed surroundings at £3.20 a bowl. Their £60,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign failed to reach its target, and the café opened on a business loan instead.

It became famous — and, in one of the UK's most deprived boroughs, infamous. In September 2015 anti-gentrification activists threw paint at the building and daubed 'scum' across it, and the café's expensive bowls in Tower Hamlets became a standing symbol of the gentrification debate. The Keerys rode the notoriety and expanded: by 2017 there were branches in Birmingham, Camden, Dubai, Kuwait and Jordan.

The pandemic ended the UK run. On 8 July 2020 the twins announced the cafés would not reopen: Brick Lane and Camden closed permanently after five and a half years and more than a million bowls sold, the business retreating to online sales on strong lockdown trade. 'Cheerio to the cafés for now,' Alan Keery signed off, 'and — we'll see you spoon.' The Dubai branch stayed open.