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Sounds like they got their cause and effect the wrong way round. In London in the last couple of decades, a new independent cafe/restaurant mostly wasn't for "people like us" where us is the locals, because rising rates and austerity meant that the locals mostly couldn't afford to open a new business. And the incomers who could afford it were targetting "people like them". Self-reinforcing cycle. Doesn't mean locals would automatically be opposed to know independent cafes/restaurants or the older ones in Brixton, for example, would never have gotten started.
itsbruce-
As I said, I was "scraping this from the back of my memory" so I wouldn't invest any time trying to disprove an anecdotal report of something which was much more scholarly. The causes for the claim are certainly many and complex and if you found the original article (which I suspect was a piece of ethnography) you'd probably be better off than just going by my post.
Not just American. I either read, or listened to a Thinking Allowed episode, about chain cafes and restaurants and the meaning they had for different people in communities in London. Especially in regard to gentrification. I'm scraping this from the back of my memory, but I think the details were: Chains were generally seen as more welcoming, open, and inclusive to long-time locals and people with lower incomes. New independent places were seen as less welcoming as places "not for people like us."