Being trendy can bite you in the bottom.
Just ask the Footscray's hipster business vanguard: 8bit burgers, Rudimentary cafe, Littlefoot Bar and Up In Smoke barbecue restaurant. All four have been defaced in recent months.
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Footscray burger restaurant vandalised
Vandals have targeted an upmarket burger restaurant in Footscray, smashing glass and scrawling offensive, anti-hipster slogans on the windows.
Whether it's hipsters or yuppies, the cycle of higher income residents flooding a suburb can prove tricky ground. So how does a business owner go about adjusting?
Great expectations
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Wing La, the president of Footscray's Asian Business Association welcomes "newcomers" like 8bit and and hopes they invigorate Footscray's central business district.
Mr. La has been running his cake shop for over 25 years.
"My advice for the existing shops is they need to up their business to attract the new crowd. We need the newcomers to bring the new concepts and new people to the area of Footscray," he said.
"Hipsters are the hot topic in Footscray right now, but we can either change or we can stand still. Of course it is hard when rentals go up, but consumers understand if you need to raise prices."
Mr. La said the Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asian businesses that are a stronghold of Footscray don't need to change their recipes or food but the higher-income crowds require smarter shop fittings.
"When they upgrade their appearance, it will really help them."
Mr. La is now semi-retired but said it's important that Footscray has hospitality and food retail businesses at varying price points so that the maximum number of people are able to enjoy the suburb.
Broad appeal
Like Footscray, St. Kilda and Carlton in Melbourne, many Sydney suburbs have seen changes in income brackets and multicultural make up in the last decade.
"Growing up in Dulwich Hill, it felt very Greek and Italian but that's completely changed after the global financial crisis pushed people out of the more expensive inner suburbs" said Dean Papas, owner of The Hub House Diner, an American-style burger joint.
Mr Papas worked in his father's rotisserie chicken shops as a young man, and four years ago opened the Hub House Diner in Dulwich HIll.
"It was a huge risk. When I was building it people would come in and say I'd go broke in months, there was nothing like this outside the likes of Surry Hills or those trendy suburbs. My goal was to prove them wrong."
Four years later, the Hub is thriving with a strong social media presence and loyal local customer base.
Mr Papas said the key was price point, keeping it competitive to suburban offerings, and not trying to bamboozle locals with the menu.
"Our ploy was to be an accessible business so we had to appeal to the likes of all people, we didn't want to narrow our client base to hipsters or yuppies or just the Mediterranean crowd either. We did it through our menu."
Priced out
While Mr La and Mr Papas are optimistic, history shows that business owners who can't capitalise on higher foot traffic risk failure.
Catherine Cashmore of Prosper Australia said entrepreneurs can often face the brunt of changing property prices and councils need to respond.
"One thing local councils can do is change the ratings system. At the moment if a small business decides to renovate or extend their building in response to competition, they are penalised with higher rates. We should be encouraging people to build on existing land they have," she said.
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