OK, not Australian, but I sort of see the idea. They want steady custom and passing trade - including tourists, I imagine (every capital city has more than its fair share of those). So they're thinking about the average middle-class family with dollars to spend and looking for lunch who might glance through the windows. If they see the place full of tattooed people, people wearing designer gear or folk wearing expensive-looking jewellery, they're going to think "not our kind of place" and settle for MacDonalds. The family lose a good meal and the restaurant loses custom.

They probably think they can't rely on celebrity and 'high-class' customers to pay the mortgage, as those types are notoriouly fickle.

It reminds me of a time some years ago when we had a late holiday in Weston-Super-Mare. Our daughter was 18, our son 14. Anne and I were gasping for a coffee and made a bee-line for a nearby cafe, only for Jenn to look through the window and stop in her tracks.

"I'm not going in there!" She stated. "It's full of bloody Townies!" Jenn was, of course, a Goth, but Rik, who was still a Sk8er then, backed her up. So we had to walk another half-mile before we found a coffee-shop our picky offspring approved of!

It's not only shops where the window display matters!