Check scopes on this link: http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#query-scopes

This way you can query your database and select only projects which are visible to user

Currently I'm building my view this way:

@foreach($customers as $customer)
                                <tr class="ignore-from-filtering">
                                    <td colspan="6"><strong> {{ $customer->name }}</strong> ({{ $customer->projects->count() }})</td>
                                </tr>
                                @foreach($customer->projects as $project)
/* ... */

So, where to implement the scopes?

You will probably want to check out: http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#eager-loading ("Eager Load Constraints")

and/or

http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#query-scopes

Are there any examples out there for scopes? I can't figure out, how they really work :/