It seems that in the past couple of years, there’s been a huge boom in frozen yogurt, of the self-serve, add your toppings and weight it variety. I can name over half a dozen of these shops in a 5 mile radius of my house, all having opened recently, some within visual range of each other. Other people I’ve talked to have agreed that they are popping up all over in their neighborhoods too. Why now?
Was there some advance in the frozen yogurt technology recently?
Just a fad, like cupcakes were a few years ago?
Some brand of frozen yogurt making machine with a great sales team?
There is nothing new under the sun. Same thing happened in the late '80s with TCBY and ICBY. I expect kids to start sporting flat-tops and British Knights any day now.
First, research shows (no cite, sorry) that a customer will purchase more of stuff like frozen yogurt if you give them only one size cup (large), and make them pay by the ounce. That way they don’t know how much they’re getting or how much it will cost until they get to the register, at which point it’s too late to put some back.
People like to mix and match flavors, so they also tend to put more in the cup for that reason.
Also it saves on labor. All you need is a cashier (and maybe someone in back preparing the toppings that need it, like chopping up strawberries).
Roddy
I’d bet there is a package franchiser, probably an equipment maker that has added in other turnkey elements, behind it. Not necessarily one franchise name but a “Business Helper” model like that seen in the entrepreneur magazines and sites.
It’s all part of the recession economy. Fro-yo is in the same class as cupcake bakeries and burger joints. People still want to eat out, but may not have a lot of cash, and these places offer a meal or a treat without the big expense of a sit-down restaurant. Otherwise, you’d see more Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s opening all over the place.
I have to give the owners of these places credit, though, opening up a restaurant in these times - takes guts!
What baffles me is the number of storefront self-serve yogurt joints popping up in Toronto. Is anyone going to walk down the street to pick up some frozen yogurt in the middle of winter in Toronto?
I think your first two sentences are right. But these kind of places have low startup costs, so I’d suspect that it’s more a matter of Mom and Pop pooling their last $20k for an effort like this than anyone necessarily shrewd, able and likely to make it profitable.
That’s how entrepreneurial franchising works. It’s a bit of a pyramid scheme in which no one but the equipment/package/franchise provider makes money, and which could be successful except that every strip ends up with five cupcake shops, which turn into five Italian burger joints, which turn into five self-serve froyo places…
I think you’re right, it’s mom and pop and perhaps a pyramid scheme. That and/or they’re all recent immigrants from the same country, and their connections back home are their only shot at making it. If that means all Hungarians work in steel mills, all Pakistanis drive hacks, etc etc, they don’t have a lot of choice.
Maybe someone, someday will explain how there can be an apparently successful nail salon run by a Vietnamese woman every 1/5 of a mile, all the way across the country.
Never heard of either of them. The only name in this thread I’m familiar with is TCBY, but that’s been around for ages and I don’t recall it being self-serve or anything. I’m kind of fascinated about how it’s apparently ubiquitous elsewhere and almost non-existent here.
I wouldn’t call this type of store ubiquitous in Toronto. The chain “Yogurty’s” has a dozen locations in Toronto, for example. I just thought it was odd how they all sprouted overnight, considering it’s sort of an unusual concept (a self-serve restaurant that serves exactly one thing).
But like I said, I wonder how many will survive the cruel, cruel winter. “Homer, you knuckle-beak, I told you a hundred times: you’ve got to sell your pumpkin futures before Hallowe’en!”
Answer: because they’re indies or small chains that are decorated through the collusion of the Mom&Poperators and the local sign shop, and nothing says froyo like geometric shapes in not-quite-pastels.