Sweet, tart and a growing trend in R.I.

COOLING OFF? Danielle Mott, assistant manager at Hot and Cold Frozen Yogurt in Providence, serves a customer. While national frozen yogurt chains are growing their presence in Rhode Island, independent stores such as Hot and Cold are finding a market. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
COOLING OFF? Danielle Mott, assistant manager at Hot and Cold Frozen Yogurt in Providence, serves a customer. While national frozen yogurt chains are growing their presence in Rhode Island, independent stores such as Hot and Cold are finding a market. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

American fast food had hit a dry patch in dessert trends when frozen yogurt returned in a blur of neon lights, pop music and smashed candy-bar toppings.
A New England invention popularized in the 1980s and left behind a decade later, frozen yogurt has come back stronger than ever in the last five years with a new breed of parlors pumping out soft serve in malls and on Main streets.
Known as “froyo lounges,” these new establishments typically emphasize self-service and a modernist aesthetic with influences drawn from California and Korea.
From one or two frozen yogurt counters in Rhode Island’s large malls in 2000, there are now about 15 froyo establishments stretching across the state, with more planned.
In Providence’s college and tourist neighborhoods, dueling froyo lounges compete for traffic on the same streets as mom-and-pop gelato shops and national ice cream chains.
“We understand there is a lot of frozen yogurt coming into the area,” said Dennis Bok, vice president and director of franchising at FroyoWorld, which opened a shop on Thayer Street in Providence two years ago and is now the biggest froyo presence in Rhode Island. “But with the proprietary formulations we have, we are not just any run-of-the-mill yogurt shop.”
Behind the bright lighting and flashing music videos, froyo lounges are simple: customers use do-it-yourself soft-serve machines to fill their cup with yogurt and then pile on whatever fruit and candy toppings they want. Some charge by cup size and others by weight. Some have a server pour the yogurt.
Like they did in the 1980s, modern froyo lounges tout the desert’s relative healthiness, but unlike older chains, many of the new shops do not try to make their product like ice cream. Instead they play up the inherently tart taste of yogurt originally thought to drive Americans away.
Based in New Haven, Conn., FroyoWorld embodies the new generation of froyo. The company’s co-founders, William and Susan Bok, were involved in a San Francisco full-service yogurt shop called Yocup, and moved to the East Coast when it was sold.
Seeing New England as an underserved market, they opened the first FroyoWorld near Yale University in 2010. The second shop popped up on Thayer Street near Brown University soon after. Three years after launching the business, there are 30 FroyoWorlds – in Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as Massachusetts, New York and Puerto Rico – and Bok said the company is negotiating franchise and lease agreements to open 30 more by the end of next year.
In Rhode Island, the Thayer Street store is joined by one in the Lincoln Mall, and Bok said talks are underway to open three more in the state at undisclosed locations.
While Bok described the froyo market in San Francisco as “saturated,” the East Coast has only seen yogurt shops spread more recently.
Oklahoma-based froyo chain Orange Leaf is also expanding rapidly in the Northeast, with 13 new stores slated to open in Massachusetts by the end of the year, including locations in Attleboro, Mansfield, Seekonk and Swansea. In Rhode Island, Orange Leaf is opening a new lounge in Cranston to go with existing locations in East Greenwich, Newport, Warwick, Westerly and at the University of Rhode Island in South Kingstown.
But how many froyo lounges New England can support, and how long the current burst of popularity will last, are open to debate.
“It’s not saturated here. We have a tremendous following,” Bok said. “On Facebook, when we announce an opening, we get a big response.”
The exact number of frozen yogurt establishments in Rhode Island is difficult to calculate, since no organization exclusively represents them and the attrition rate for stores, like many food service establishments, is high.
A quick survey of online listings found 15 frozen yogurt stores in the state (not counting ice cream parlors that offer yogurt as a secondary menu item) but some of them could not be reached and may have closed.
Although the froyo market is dominated by chains, the new wave of lounges in Rhode Island features a substantial number of independent businesses.
“We just got hooked on frozen yogurt,” said Vicky Fernandez, manager of Hot and Cold Frozen Yogurt and Coffee, whose family opened the shop on Smith Street in the Elmhurst section of Providence 15 months ago. Fernandez said she remembered sampling the yogurt at the since-departed TCBY franchise in the Providence Place mall before becoming addicted to the new generation of froyo joints. The major frozen-yogurt player in the 1980s, TCBY remodeled its stores in 2010, adding bright colors and a more streamlined, minimalist look to match the new style of lounges that had burst on the scene.
Lacking the super-slick standardized design of the chains, the independent businesses often offer something additional to yogurt to set them apart.
Hot and Cold supplements froyo with coffee and an espresso bar. Nearby in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood, Fruitzzy on Atwells Avenue offers crepes along with yogurt cups and smoothies.
Locally owned or franchised, the new froyo lounges have not been universally embraced.
Many homemade ice cream and gelato shops see froyo as a cheap, shopping-mall version of dessert even if they don’t view it as a threat to their businesses.
“We haven’t seen a drop in business, because I don’t think we would attract the kind of client that would go [to a froyo lounge] in the first place,” said Jocelin Dube, co-owner of Three Sisters, which makes homemade ice cream, cakes, sandwiches and coffee on Hope Street in Providence, about two miles north of FroyoWorld and neighboring Thayer Street froyo pioneer Juniper.
Exactly who the new froyo lounges are taking market share from locally is unclear. Although ice cream or frozen-lemonade sellers are the obvious candidates, once-trendy deserts like tapioca bubble tea or the milkshake-like drinks at Starbucks may actually be feeling the competition more.
Perhaps hedging his bets, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz invested heavily in froyo chain Pinkberry.
At the National Association of Ice Cream Retailers in Elk Grove Village, Ill., Executive Director Lynda Utterback said this has been a bad year for ice cream shops, but not because of froyo.
“This spring has been cold and rainy,” Utterback said. “It has been a tough year, but last year was fabulous.” •

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