I'm reminded of an article [0] posted on HN last year about "McDonald’s [being] de-facto community centers". Perhaps difference is that Locol has a 'mission' and is thus seen as a sort of charity, whereas McDonald's is very clearly a capitalist enterprise.
Overall, it seems the proprietors were very out of touch with the community. I have to wonder if they would have been much more successful if, instead of coming up with a hipster sounding name and hiring an architect to design a restaurant that would be "welcoming" to the locals, they had opened it as 'Ez Burgerz' in whatever dilapidated retail space they could find.