Frozen yogurt shops regaining place in culture

Sylvester Stallone is in the movies, again. Big sunglasses and leggings are hip, again. And along with (another) Tears For Fears concert tour, frozen yogurt places are popping up all over town.

Yup, frozen yogurt. That fad that was ever-so-hot in the 1980s is definitely back, this time with a sleek and modern look, celebrity stylishness and, perhaps most importantly, self-serve toppings on that ever-so-healthy yogurt, like fresh fruit, baklava, and chopped up Reese's Peanut Butter cups.

How hot is the yogurt trend? Get out your pencils, because the new franchises are stacking up in Florida.

Yogurtology opened last weekend in the heart of South Tampa. Berryism is opening up a second location in Carrollwood. The queen of the yogurt fad, Pinkberry, opened in Orlando this summer and expects to open one in Tampa within "a matter of months," according to Pinkberry executives.

And get ready for a whole lot of Menchie's.

That "We Make You Smile" yogurt chain could open five locations in Tampa Bay by the end of this year, and 20 by the end of 2011.You read that right, the company CEO expects 20 locations could open here in 16 months -- 60 locations total in Florida. All this is on top of current yogurt shops already here, Kiwi in Oldsmar, SunniBunni in South Tampa, Cali Yogurt and others.

Tampa's largest chain now, You Say When Yogurt Shoppe, has five locations now, and could open three more under construction, including one in South Tampa on Howard Avenue. Add to this other hot national chains: Red Mango, Yogurt Mountain, and so on.

"Like someone getting a new dress, yogurt is being reinvented and become something new," said Anit Kleinberger, chief executive of Menchie's, named after a "Mensch," a Yiddish word for a good-hearted person.

What makes yogurt so hot suddenly. Let us count the ways.

One

Yogurt got a whole new look.

Unlike the basic ice cream shop design of a TCBY's most people knew from the 1980s, this new breed of yogurt shops look more like a sleek, modern Miami Beach nightclubs: Cool white interiors, plasma HDTVs, modernistic tables and chairs.

Menchie's, Yogurtology and others offer something else new: Self Serve. Customers pick their yogurt flavor from a wall of machine dispensers, then pile on toppings from a toppings bar, some with 40 or mote items.

Jaclyn Levy of Tampa toured a slew of new yogurt places and got excited when she saw a Yogurtology spot in Arizona."I just loved the look of it, clean, sharp, modern," Levy said. "And it was such a great product, with tons of fresh toppings." She brought the concept to Tampa and opened a Yogurtology in South Tampa last weekend.

For the last few days, they've had lines of customers.

Two

And speaking of toppings. There are many.

New yogurt shops have basically abandoned the strategy from the 1980s of trying to make yogurt taste just as creamy as ice cream. Instead, they embrace the tartness of natural, active, even live yogurt cultures.

And to balance that tartness - bring on the sweet toppings.

"We have everything from gummy bears, to baklava to brownies," Levy said. Self-serve yogurt shops like hers essentially let people go as nuts as they want.

That sold Kate Houston, a customer at Yogurtology, who said she's basically done with smoothies and expects she'll drop $20 a month at Yogurtology. "I can get whatever I want," she said, while munching on a pomegranate, and tart yogurt cup. "If I feel like peanut butter cups today, there they are."

And in that sense, these locations aren't just yogurt shops. They're toppings shops. Yogurt, tasty as it might be, can become merely the chocolate chip/caramel/Butterfinger chunk delivery device. Piled high, some yogurt cups can cost $4 to $6 per cup.

Three

Good financing doesn't hurt either. And there's a lot of money behind yogurt.

Pinkberry, which all but sparked the resurgence of yogurt, is backed by a Seattle-based venture capital company called Maveron, which helped fund Capella University, Cranium, and Shutterfly - and Maveron is backed by Howard Schultz who started a chain you may have heard of called Starbucks.

That degree of backing is helping Pinkberry grow to more than 100 U.S. locations since 2005.

Pinkberry just recently sold the franchise rights to Tampa, and is evaluating several spots to open, said CEO Ron Graves. (Fun fact: Graves was an Air Force F-16 pilot before getting an MBA.) Graves isn't surprised at how many rivals there are in yogurt all the sudden.

"We've been successful," Graves said. "And success breeds a lot of followers."

Four

Yogurt is profitable to operate.

Consider for a moment the difference between a good-sized restaurant and a yogurt shop. The restaurant may have to keep 100 different menu items at the ready, plus pay rent on a 50-table space, and pay a fleet of servers and chefs.

The Yogurt shop, by contrast, is much smaller, sometimes less than 1,000 square feet. It has several yogurt machines churning and a few "kitchen" staff who feed the machines, keep the toppings table clean and run the cash register.

This is the same keep-it-simple formula that's helping the new breed of burrito restaurants like Chipotle and burger joints like Five Guys - both enjoying healthy growth.

In the frozen desert world, this adds up.

Dairy Queen, for instance, is suffering a sales decline and is losing units, according to industry tracker Technomic, and TCBY, Carvel, Ben & Jerry's and Baskin-Robbins are also having issues. By contrast, yogurt places like Pinkberry, Red Mango and Yogurtland are all pushing growth rates of 100 percent per year.

"With yogurt, from a business standpoint, you have a simple, self-gratification product at a low price point," said Kleinberger of Menchie's.

Five

Why Tampa?

As for why we're seeing all this growth in Tampa lately, there's something of a simple reason too: We're followers.

Trends in fashion, food and many other things seem to take two years to migrate from New York or Los Angeles before springing up in Tampa Bay. That's why we're just now seeing cupcake boutiques around town, long after cupcake shops like Sprinkles and Gigi's sprung up across the country.

At this pace, Tampa could very well catch onto the gourmet food truck fad by next year.

"We're sometimes one of the last places to catch onto newer trends," said Dave Burton, owner of Berryism.

Brad Bridges, owner of You Say When says yogurt isn't an automatic profit engine, however. "This is a game of pennies," where franchisees measure their ounce-per-penny formula with a fanaticism, he says.

"Hopefully this raises awareness of how good yogurt has become. As long as everybody doesn't rush in and just cut prices, because that's not good for anybody."