It’s been a year since the Cereal Killer cafe in London’s Brick Lane became the focus of an anti-gentrification riot, and its owners received letters saying “die hipsters”. To be fair, not everyone was hostile to the cafe: the morning after the riot in which protesters daubed the word “scum” on the shop window, there were queues of customers paying up to £4.50 for a bowl of cereal.  So how will Birmingham react when a branch of the cafe opens at Link Street in the Bullring next month?  With greater sangfroid than excitable Londoners, is my guess. Or maybe not. The second city is already divided – and not only between Villa and Blues fans. On the one side, there are those expressing their fabulously downbeat Brummie ennui on Twitter: “2016 carries on its reckless march toward societal collapse: cereal cafe to open in Birmingham,” tweets Hinkypunka.  On the other side is the Birmingham Evening Mail, which exclaims: “We’re cerealously excited!” (There’s no excuse for that kind of language.) “The people behind this super cool cafe,” adds the Mail with heroic journalistic objectivity, “will be whipping up all of our favourite treats like Fluff, popping candy chocolate, party rings, hundreds and thousands, jelly and choccie milk and turning them into crazy good snacks.” I know what you’re thinking: choccie isn’t a word. Or if it is, it kind of proves the point about 2016’s march to societal collapse.  My sister, who lives in Birmingham’s Acocks Green, has a different reaction. “One word – beds!” she texts me. When a second London branch opened in Camden Town last year, there weren’t just bog-standard tables and chairs – but a whole row of beds, many of them featuring 90s-era duvet covers like the Super Mario Brothers. Whether this innovation is an abomination or ergonomic boon depends on your politics. It may lead to punters queuing for breakfast clutching teddy bears in their PJs, though, in a fine prefiguring of the end of days.  A Cereal Killer cafe is opening in Birmingham, like we need over-priced hipster crap  My brother, meanwhile, has a further intriguing perspective: “Not far from Jamie’s Italian. Wonder what he would make of it? Hardly the answer to the nation’s obesity problems.” Quite so; the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has long been a campaigner for reduced sugar in British food, especially in dishes targeted at children. But the Cereal Killer cafe boasts (if that’s the word) cereals like S’Mores, Superman and Trix, as well as Chocapic from France, Kariot from Israel and Milo from Australia. What’s that noise? It’s my arteries furring at the prospect.  But let’s set aside health issues and focus on the real reason people care about the Cereal Killer cafe: the social transformation it apparently implies. “Oh geez,” tweets Aceman, “a Cereal Killer cafe is opening in Birmingham, like we need over-priced hipster crap.”  Hold on, Aceman. Perhaps I don’t understand gentrification, but this kind of retail development doesn’t seem of a piece with what hipster culture usually means: the craft beers, beards and overpriced Jewellery Quarter apartments. Hipsters, surely, are more like the earnest young Texan couple terrorised by anti-gentrification campaigner Lillian Kaushtupper in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. They arrive in town looking for authentic signifiers of old New York – soul food restaurants, off-the-grid thrift stores – rather than the commodified, themed, pre-packaged retro eating experience the Cereal Killer cafe offers.  Surely gentrification is more like what happened in South Park when an eyesore neighbourhood was redeveloped into the funky-sounding SoDo SoPa (short for “south of downtown South Park”), and whose new identity was validated by the arrival of a branch of Whole Foods.  If the Cereal Killer cafe offers gentrification, it’s not what it used to be. Without wishing to be snobbish (there’s no good way this sentence can end), I suspect that those most titillated by the arrival in Birmingham of the cafe are in the same demographic as those wowed by the roll-out of at-table service at all 18 Birmingham McDonald’s branches.  And yet it arrives at a poised moment for the city. Earlier this month, it was revealed that more than 6,000 people left London for England’s second city last year – more appealing to capital quitters than the second, third and fourth most popular destinations (Brighton, Thurrock and Epping Forest, respectively) – which are all within 50 miles of London. The data was glossed thus by Jay Islaam in the Guardian: “Londoners, you live in a malodorous rat-pit. Come to Birmingham instead.” Gotta love that Brummie hospitality: welcoming you with one hand and giving you the finger with the other.  But here’s my worry: it’s quite possible that one reason Birmingham became appealing to unhappy Londoners is precisely because it didn’t, until now, have a branch of the Cereal Killer cafe. Those who quit the rat-pit sought an escape from the branded and commodified “experience dining” that London offers in crazy numbers. Perhaps the next set of internal migration figures will show Birmingham being supplanted as a destination for Londoners by a city that has kept it real: Wolverhampton or Sunderland for instance. Birmingham, just possibly, may be becoming a victim of its own success.  Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook and join the discussion
The notorious Cereal Killer cafe became the focus of anti-gentrification riots in London last year, but now the bearded owners are taking their pricey bowls of rare cereal to England’s second city. How will Brummies react?