All posts tagged: gentrification

‘Not quite Greggs’: TikTok creators put London’s ‘gentrified’ bakeries to the test | Gentrification

‘Not quite Greggs’: TikTok creators put London’s ‘gentrified’ bakeries to the test | Gentrification

The video that started it all was innocuous enough: a woman in her 20s posted on TikTok about how she spends a perfect weekend in north London. On her list were the bakeries Jolene and Gail’s, and the De Beauvoir Deli. The reaction, however, was anything but. Many locals commented that they had never heard of the businesses she mentioned. One north Londoner, Moses Combe, 21, was equally incredulous. “If this is where all the north London girlies come in the morning, I’d be a bit surprised,” he said in a viral video. Combe dubbed his reviews the ‘Endz Department for Research’. Photograph: tiktok/m.combe07 He set out on a mission to visit the establishments and see for himself what the fuss was about, heading into Jolene and buying a hot chocolate, sausage roll and his very first tiramisu cake, which he described as “bloody lovely”. So began a series of videos that the young Londoner has named the “Endz Department for Research”, in which he reviews upmarket cafés that he wouldn’t otherwise visit in his …