A U.K. cereal cafe bore the brunt of angry anti-gentrification protesters with "paint and fire" on Saturday. 
 
 The Cereal Killer Cafe on London's Brick Lane is the U.K.'s "first speciality cereal cafe," according to its website. 
 
 Twins Alan and Gary Keery opened the store in late 2014. The cafe sells more than 120 different types of cereal that patrons can pair with over 30 types of milk and more than 20 toppings. 
 
 The cafe's popularity prompted the brothers to open a second location in Camden Market. 
 
 However, not everyone seems to be a fan of the specialty cereal seller and what they deem it stands for. 
 
 A movement called the f*** parade, which claims to be "fighting gentrification with 12 volt multi-rig street parties," staged a protest against the gentrification of East London, where the first Cereal Killer Cafe was established. 
 
 The protest was so large it temporarily blocked Old Street roundabout. 
 
 Due to an impromptu demo, Old Street Roundabout is currently blocked. Expect delays on all approaches. pic.twitter.com/qyRszSWJ68 — @TfLTrafficNews 
 
 The parade started at Shoreditch Station, roughly 300 metres from the cafe. The procession consisted of four rigs and hundreds of people carrying torches, according to tweets from the movement's account. 
 
 "Reclaim East London from developers & hipsters," the movement declared. 
 
 Four rigs, hundreds of pissed off people, flaming torches. Reclaim East London from developers & hipsters #fuckparade — @FuckParadeLDN 
 
 The movement seemed to be against "cutesy boutiques and coffee shops," and claimed Shoreditch was the "belly of the beast" of gentrification. It called for "homes for everyone" over these types of shops. 
 
 Belly of the beast. Fuck gentrification, Fuck cutesy boutiques and coffee shops. Homes for everyone. #fuckparade pic.twitter.com/ubsYUjwMgd — @FuckParadeLDN 
 
 The cereal cafe quickly became a target in the group's tweets. 
 
 Cereal cafe. £5 for cereal when people are starving. Fuck gentrification. pic.twitter.com/3mVmHFnOAT — @FuckParadeLDN 
 
 It appeared that protesters splattered paint on the cafe's windows. 
 
 The cafe claims "an angry mob" of about 200 people attacked it with "paint and fire." Riot police were on the scene, according to the cafe. 
 
 Tonight we were attacked with paint and fire by an angry mob of 200. Riot police are on the scene. pic.twitter.com/GPXLmyMmuN — @CerealKillerUK 
 
 No staff or customers were harmed during the attack. 
 
 Staff and customers unharmed, although children were in the cafe, mob still around so stay away from shoreditch. — @CerealKillerUK 
 
 The movement disputes the cafe's claim that children were in the establishment during the protest. 
 
 The cafe was seemingly unimpressed with the protesters' reasoning for attacking the establishment. 
 
 Unhappy with the state of the country? Why not attack a small business #smart pic.twitter.com/gt3oL8Z4Vm — @CerealKillerUK 
 
 We started a business to deliver an experience to cereal lovers, and have been thanked by local businesses for bringing tourists to the area — @CerealKillerUK 
 
 The mob won't win, wearing masks with pitch forks and torches, it's 2015. #hatecrime — @CerealKillerUK 
 
 The cereal cafe wasn't the only storefront damaged during the protest. 
 
 Marsh & Parsons, a London real estate agency, also suffered some damage. 
 
 However, by Sunday, it was business as usual for at least one of the two establishments. The cereal bar was back to serving bowls of specialty cereals. ||||| Hundreds of protesters attacked a cereal cafe in east London on Saturday night, daubing the word “scum” on the shop window and setting fire to an effigy of a police officer. 
 
 Riot police were called in to defend the Cereal Killer Cafe in Shoreditch after it was targeted by a large crowd of anti-gentrification activists carrying pigs’ heads and torches. 
 
 The owners of the cafe, which has been seen by some as a symbol of inequality in east London, said on Sunday that the attack left customers including children “terrified for their lives”. 
 
 The hipster Cereal Killer Cafe owners aren’t the East End’s real enemy | Audrey Gillan Read more 
 
 Gary Keery, 33, who founded the cafe with his twin brother, Alan, said: “It’s senseless violence, isn’t it? We’ve had some letters through the letterbox saying ‘die hipsters’ and stuff but nothing to this extreme. It just doesn’t make sense.” Footage of the attack filmed from inside the shop and obtained by the Guardian shows masked protesters shouting outside the shopfront. One man daubs graffiti on the window while another is seen holding a burning stick. 
 
 The Metropolitan police said one of their officers had suffered an injury to his face as a result of a bottle thrown during the disorder, caused by a “criminal element within a group of several hundred people” who had thrown missiles and attacked shops on Brick Lane. 
 
 They added that one protester was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage. 
 
 Cereal Killer Cafe (@CerealKillerUK) Tonight we were attacked with paint and fire by an angry mob of 200. Riot police are on the scene. pic.twitter.com/GPXLmyMmuN 
 
 One protester who was at the demonstration said the Cereal Killer Cafe was targeted as a “symbol of gentrification”, although he said a nearby estate agent, Marsh & Parsons, was also attacked. The cafe, which opened in December, was open as usual on Sunday morning, with queues of customers paying up to £4.40 for a bowl of cereal. 
 
 Gary Keery said customers – including children – barricaded the cafe doors when the disturbance started but then had to be moved downstairs to safety. At one point the protesters managed to break into the small shop and threw a smoke bomb and furniture inside the doorway, he said. Other masked figures threw red paint and cereal at the shop windows. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Footage from the protest shows damage to the cafe and a nearby estate agent and burning torches in the street 
 
 “If they really believe in the protest, why are they covering their face while they’re doing it? Why are they wearing pig masks?” Gary said. “It’s not just the fact that someone threw paint on the windows, there’s more of a deep-rooted issue that needs to be looked at. You need to look at why they’re attacking us.” 
 
 The cereal-only cafe has sparked controversy since its opening. The Keery brothers were forced to defend their prices after a Channel 4 News interviewer asked whether local people could afford £3.20 for a bowl of cereal. 
 
 Can the Cereal Killer cafe, which sells only cereal, really make a killing? Read more 
 
 Gary dismissed the suggestion that his business had become a symbol of east London gentrification. “There’s another Pret at the top of the street here and that wasn’t targeted. We’re an independent business, we’ve got two shops, we’ve only been open months,” he said. 
 
 “If you want to talk about gentrification and different classes, you don’t go about attacking independent businesses who are putting their whole life on the line to open a business, you go to the conglomerates and big companies.” 
 
 The protest was advertised on Facebook as the third Fuck Parade, and was apparently organised by the anarchist group Class War. The event page stated: “Our communities are being ripped apart – by Russian oligarchs, Saudi sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs. Local authorities are coining it in, in a short-sighted race for cash by ‘regenerating’ social housing. 
 
 Jamie Osman (@jamieosman) Whatever happened in Shoreditch tonight is making my life exceedingly difficult pic.twitter.com/g2jXaEVpJu 
 
 “We don’t want luxury flats that no one can afford, we want genuinely affordable housing. We don’t want pop-up gin bars or brioche buns, we want community.” The Fuck Parade organisers had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. 
 
 Esther Planas Balduz, 55, an artist who attended the protest after hearing about it on Facebook, said she supported the cause because she was evicted from her home of seven years when her rent doubled last year. 
 
 “I’ve lived in Shoreditch for 17 years and it’s appalling what’s been going on. Its our fault, artists like me go to these kind of areas, then the architects follow, the developers, the hipsters etc,” Balduz said. “The problem is social cleansing. There are no protections for us. The law does not protect us, only the greedy landowners.” 
 
 Lisa Mckenzie (@redrumlisa) Anti-gentrification tonight in Shoreditch #FuckParade #classwar pic.twitter.com/qK9IWnh5kp 
 
 Balduz said the protest seemed “more like a punk carnival” and hoped it would open up debate on the issue of gentrification. “Even if a few became a bit aggressive, it was really less aggressive than the masses of drunks I have to cope with every weekend in the area,” she said. 
 
 Another protester, who declined to be named, conceded that there were “more justifiable targets” than a small independent business, but played down the scale of the attack. ||||| A mob of masked demonstrators has attacked a “hipster” cereal café in east London, throwing paint at its windows and daubing “scum” on the walls in an anti-gentrification protest. 
 
 UK: Anti-gentrification activists attack Shoreditch's infamous Cereal Killer cafe 
 
 The "Cereal Killer" cafe in Brick Lane was attacked by a "mob" of around 200 protesters on Saturday night, the owners said on Twitter. 
 
 Tonight we were attacked with paint and fire by an angry mob of 200. Riot police are on the scene. pic.twitter.com/GPXLmyMmuN — Cereal Killer Cafe (@CerealKillerUK) September 26, 2015 
 
 Staff and customers unharmed, although children were in the cafe, mob still around so stay away from shoreditch. — Cereal Killer Cafe (@CerealKillerUK) September 26, 2015 
 
 The protesters, who dubbed themselves "The F*** Parade", began a march from Shoreditch High Street overground station at around 7pm, through Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane in a call to "reclaim Shoreditch". 
 
 On a Facebook event page for the protest, organisers said they were protecting the working class people of London from "dog-eat-dog economics". 
 
 It said: "Our communities are being ripped apart - by Russian oligarchs, Saudi Sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money t***s and our own home-grown Eton toffs. Local authorities are coining it in, in a short sighted race for cash by "regenerating" social housing. 
 
 'Class War' protesters in Shoreditch on Saturday night (@jamieosman 
 
 "We don't want luxury flats that no one can afford, we want genuinely affordable housing. We don't want pop-up gin bars or brioche buns - we want community." 
 
 The event was billed as a "street party" with "music, pyrotechnics and cheeky banner drops". 
 
 But pictures from the event show chairs being thrown at a branch of the Marsh & Parsons estate agent in Bethnal Green Road. 
 
 They also burned an effigy of the so-called "hipster cop", a London police officer from Walthamstow with a long beard who inadvertently became an internet meme earlier this year. 
 
 An effigy of the so-called "hipster cop" was burnt at the protest against gentrification 
 
 According to the Standard, the mob was carrying torches and "pigs heads". 
 
 Alan and Gary Keery, the owners of the Cereal Killer Cafe which opened last year, have remained defiant and opened the shop as normal on Sunday morning. 
 
 The mob won't win, wearing masks with pitch forks and torches, it's 2015. #hatecrime — Cereal Killer Cafe (@CerealKillerUK) September 27, 2015 
 
 Open as normal today guys, come down to see our new shopfront #makeover — Cereal Killer Cafe (@CerealKillerUK) September 27, 2015 
 
 A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said one person had been arrested in the riot and another had been injured.
– An angry mob vented its rage against East London hipsters over the weekend by attacking a cafe and scrawling "scum" on the window. But the establishment wasn't just any cafe—it was a cereal cafe. As in, cereal in a bowl. "It’s senseless violence, isn’t it?" Gary Keery, co-owner of Cereal Killer Cafe, tells the Guardian. "We’ve had some letters through the letterbox saying 'die hipsters' and stuff but nothing to this extreme. It just doesn’t make sense." He says terrified customers and their children hid inside while protesters (who carried torches and pig heads) threw cereal and red paint at the windows. After customers found safety downstairs, members of the mob managed to break in and throw furniture and a smoke bomb inside. Roughly 200-strong, the protesters explained their anti-gentrification stance on a Facebook event page, reports the Independent. "Our communities are being ripped apart—by Russian oligarchs, Saudi Sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs," they write. "We don't want luxury flats that no one can afford, we want genuinely affordable housing." Their protest also left a police officer injured (flying bottle to the face) and a nearby real estate agency damaged. By Sunday, though, Cereal Killer Cafe was back in business, selling over 120 kinds of cereal with more than 20 toppings and 30 kinds of milk, for up to $6.50 a bowl, the CBC reports. (In the US, hipsters' $4 toast has an interesting back story.)