TCBY – See ya later!

0Josh • 6th Jul 2008 • blog entries • Uncategorized

Its been almost 6 months now since I was introduced to “new” frozen yogurt while on a recruiting trip for work in southern California.  This is the most unbelievably delicious treat you could ever imagine, usually its “tart” soft-serve style frozen yogurt (tastes similar to plain yogurt, but slightly sweeter) topped with fresh fruit, or other fun toppings.  Sometimes there will be a green tea, or a rasberry flavored yogurt, but generally its just plain, so your variety comes from what you top it with.

Its not hard at all in southern California to find one of these trendy yogurt shops either in a storefront of its own, or at a kiosk/booth at almost every local mall (larger chains like pinkberry, ce fiore, and red mango make it pretty easy) ….. in western washington or other places however, its a lot harder to find a yogurt “taste oasis” that it should be.

I found a shop in the Ballard area called “Moo Berry” its a small locally owned yogurt place that tasted very good on a hot day.  Secondly, “Bliss” in the Federal Way mall is another local retailer that hadn’t been open very long when Lydia and I stumbled upon it during our first trip to that mall in many years.  I asked how long they had been open and the cashier said “ohhh…. two days? yeah, yesterday was our first day, we gave out samples before that”. I haven’t been there yet, but is sounds like even the stupidmall, SuperMall has an independent tart-yogurt stand.

It seems like right now the mega chains from SoCal are slow to show up, and this new fad is being introduced by small independant shops.  When we were on our road trip a few months back we sought after these types of shops and didn’t have any problem finding them in the bay area, or Portland.

More yogurt is coming though, Red Mango, which many attribute to starting the craze down in LA (bringing the idea from Korea) has already opened stores at Pacific Place in downtown Seattle, Kirkland, and in just a few weeks will open a store in the new Southcenter Mall expansion, along with LA competitor Cie Fiore.  Pinkberry, perhaps the most popular SoCal yogurt shop received $27.5m from Howard Shultz’s venture investment firm to take the store’s concept nationwide.

With only a handful of calaries, and 0% fat…. this is one fad that I hope catches on soon….. and comes to Olympia as soon as possible!