£3.20 for a bowl of cereal - is there anything left out there that hasn't been wankified?

[Neverbuyheliumbalonz]

So the new cereal cafe has opened in East London, with a bowl of cereal going for £3.20. Apparently there are over a hundred types of cereal and 30 different types of milk.

On the opening day the owner got a bit of stick from a channel 4 reporter who questioned whether they should be selling cereal at £3.20 a bowl, considering they were in one of Londons poorest boroughs
www.channel4.com/news/cereal-cafe-opens-in-london-but-can-it-survive

Now I actually thought that that reporter was quite unfair because there are tonnes of places in that area selling overpriced shit that are 'not accessible to the poor' so I don't think these guys are doing anything different to anyone else in that respect. However the owner handled it terribly, especially when he said 'this isnt one of Londons poorest boroughs is it?' and when asked why the cereal was so expensive he said 'its imported from America' as if that justified it? He just epitomised the 'out of touch hipster'.

But AIBU to think that £3.20 for one bowl of cereal is just a hilarious rip off, regardless of whether you can afford it or not? Yes I know, people who go there are total mugs can spend their money how they choose and its 'an experience' or whatever.

But it's.........breakfast cereal

Plus they keep using the word 'source' when talking about the cereals (if we can source it, we will sell it) which automatically puts them into wankdom anyway.

I guess time will tell on this one...

I haven't read the full thread but I like "wankified" and I will adopt it if you don't mind!

IMO you're all right: yes it is over-wankified and over-priced but even if they sold air and water a cafe would have to charge probably 2.00+ just for the space, insurance, staff costs, cleaning the table, etc etc etc. Like Costa with tea. So people aren't paying for the cereal itself but for the "experience" (!) the "cereal mixologist" (CRINGE) and actually just a place to go that isn't their flat. And yes Tower Hamlets has many residents who are very far from wealthy but Shoreditch has long been 'wankified' coffee places and there's the boxcar mall and all that - so I can see why the owner might be surprised at the question. The fraction of businesses aiming for the demographic that has very little money is tiny, and there are plenty of hipsters around with 3 spare quid for a funny cafe...

:) at Tyzer, they probably got the idea doing the drinking that led to the hangovers.. seems like a novelty that people might go to once but I doubt would become regulars. Maybe a fun/ironic and relatively inexpensive (compared to the main tourist things) thing for tourists.

Most food has been wankified if it looks handmade or is specially presented. I can't believe that the average yoghurt now costs 50p. That's an extra £2 on your meal budget for a bit of sour milk with sugar in it. I saw one from Waitrose for £1.50 just because it was in a cute jar. The jar wasn't even worth that and the ingredient list read 'full cream milk, sugar, raspberries'. It cost £1.50 because it looked like it had come from a friendly farmer and milked by hand by a woman in a white bonnet.

And don't get me started on artisan porridge. Costs about 20p including the milk.

It's cupcakes that get me! £2.00 for what's essentially a glorified fairy cake....

I'm well up for banning beards ( except for religious reasons of course ). I sick of all these hairy men, I mean their is a nice beard then the tramp beard that people are sporting now. Very shocking when they appear from behind you!

It is total nonsense and overpriced but so is all food when bought in a restaurant. As someone else pointed out, glass of wine in a pub costs the same as a bottle in a supermarket, a bowl of pasta costs £10 when you can buy a 500g bag for 30p and a jar of sauce for £1. And a slice of cake will cost you £2.50 when the ingredients for the whole cake cost maybe £4 or £5.

Restaurant food takes some skill to prepare. I'm an ok cook but I don't mind paying for expertly prepared food I would find really hard to prepare for myself at home.

There's a lot of stuff that's wankified nowadays when you think about it. All those gift sets in Boots at this time of year selling for about twice the price of what they would be had you bought them separately. Stick 'em in a box or a basket with a bit of tissue paper with an inflated price tag and watch the punters cream themselves over their bargains. I only ever buy that stuff in January when it's half price. It's still wankified but at least it's not a rip off wankification.

Can I just say in response to Curlyhairedassassin , because it's hardly worth a thread on its own, that I saw the most ludicrous gift set combination ever the other day; eau de toilette and fingerless gloves in a box. Why? When would those be a natural pairing?

Did you all see this? usvsth3m.com/post/so-i-visited-the-cereal-killer-cafe-and-what-happened-next-surprised-me

The shortened version: cynical journo visits cereal cafe, accidentally meets the owners' parents (not hipsters but from Belfast), is charmed.

I'd eat there, not least because it would be nice to have a bowl of cereal once in a while without having to plough through a whole sodding box before it went stale. (But I'm too far away.)

On the poverty thing - a sit down bowl of something in a caff for £3 isn't bad. A cup of coffee and a stale muffin from Starbucks will cost you twice that.

Well yeah, but it's a fair bet that most annoying hipsters have non-annoying parents.

The beard and the twin thing is a bit Shoreditch, true, but "brothers set up small independent cafe which employs people and pays tax" is still something to applaud, I'd have thought. I find coffee chains that squirrel all their profits offshore and don't pay taxes much more annoying.

I'm not going to express an opinion on a cafe that sells only cereal, I know it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, (the fact that I don't like cereal is probably a big part of that),

Can't deny I'd be very surprised if the business lasts the test of time, and that's not because the owners are 'hipsters', what it has left me wondering who exactly is going to go there. There is of course going to be a good chunk of society that think 'ooh wow a cereal cafe how cool/different/hip etc' and go along and try it out, but exactly how many people are going to keep on going. It doesn't really sound too like a sustainable business.

I've read a lot about the area it's in, I don't know London at all, but some portrayed it as poor and others as a trendy place. If it's the former than that's surely that's a major mistake.

It certainly isn't a good parallel to saying that it's OK and acceptable that a bowl cost what a box cost in the supermarket because you get charged €10 for a pasta dish in a restaurant and a bag of pasta and sauce are such and such, because as a general rule pasta in a restaurant taste a hell of a lot better than cheap jarred sauce. However cereal is just cereal, better parallels are being charged £2 for toast or £3 of coffee, or £2.50 for tea. Even then places that sell toast/coffee/tea generally sell other products as well.

Hmmm, my first sentence was supposed to be "I'm not going to express an opinion on a cafe that sells only cereal on a wankology scale' rather than saying I wasn't going to express an opinion, especially seeing that I actually did!!!

It's slap bang in the middle of Hipster Central Moln. It's very very close to some extremely deprived large council estates (largely Bangladeshi population afaik) but also a brisk 10 minutes walk from the City of London where there are 400,000 people working every week day, who may not be trendy, but who are disproportionately young and well-off. So it might work, maybe, who knows?

I've read a lot about the area it's in, I don't know London at all, but some portrayed it as poor and others as a trendy place. If it's the former than that's surely that's a major mistake.

Like many other parts of London, it has very poor people living slap bang up against the very rich. So, both.