Suburban Frozen Yogurt Explosion

As summer temperatures climb, you can break a sweat hoofing it to all the new frozen yogurt places designed to cool you off and at the same time make you healthier. These fro-yo shops are sprouting in downtowns and in strip malls around the East Bay suburbs. But what makes one shop different from the others, and is frozen yogurt really a treat that you can eat without too much guilt?   

The walls of these shops feature stylish tiled designs and posters that praise the digestion-smoothing and bone-building capabilities of frozen yogurt. Also beckoning customers are the  exotic and sometime loony toppings in salad-bar style troughs.  Sides of gelato and ice cream are sometimes nearby.

It's a far cry from the fro-yo that TCBY (the Country's Best Yogurt) introduced in the 1980s and even farther from its predecessor—a chalky swirl in a Styrofoam cup often found at the back of your local health food store.

TCBY CEO Tim Casey calls the new wave "yogurt as theater." The Salt Lake City-based chain (with a location at Pleasanton's Hacienda Crossings shopping center) is reacting by rolling out new self-serve stores.

You can top nearly all four food groups on your yogurt—red beans, organic pistachios and cheesecake bits as your proteins; cereal and granola as grains; chocolate as more dairy and every fruit imaginable.

The competition comes from stores claiming their machines add less air to make yogurt thicker. Stores with fewer flavors defend themselves by saying they'd have to add more additives or sweeteners to make, say, a Valencia Orange.

Frozen yogurt will always be a healthier alternative than ice cream, with most varieties containing between 0 to 2 grams of fat compared to ice cream, which by law has be made with 10 percent butter fat, says Wayne Geilman, a food scientist working with TCBY. But if you want to keep it healthy, you need to take care with the toppings.

"You can go from a 100 to 120 calorie serving of yogurt to 700 calories if you make a banana split," he says. "Hot fudge blows the calories way up."

Most new shops allow the consumer to be in the driver's seat, filling cups that mostly contain three, ½ cup servings and having at times more than 50 choices of toppings. Prices in these self-serve shops range from 30 to 45 cents an ounce.

More than a war of taste, where to enjoy frozen yogurt seems to be a war of location.

"We just go where it's convenient," says Irene Kazimir, of Walnut Creek while outside Yoppi Yogurt. "When I go to the movies, I go someplace else."

Walnut Creek

No place are the yogurt wars more competitive than downtown. Just a few days ago, Red Mango, in Plaza Escuela, suddenly shut its doors. Red Mango opened with great fanfare last spring with the owner of the franchise being Yul Kwon, the affable winner of the 2006 season of TV's Survivor. Kwon also grew up in Walnut Creek. However, last fall, news came that Kwon, a Yale Law School grad, had gone to work in the Obama adminstration.  

Just two blocks down Locust Street from Red Mango, and close by the Century 14 Downtown Walnut Creek movie theater, is Coco Swirl. The self-serve fro-yo and topping emporium, which also has a location in Pleasant Hill, politely asks customers not to taste before weighing. "We know it's tempting." There are more flavor selections at CoCo Swirl than at Red Mango.

Both are giving Yogurt Park and which each serve from behind the counter, a run for their money. Yogurt Park, with a Berkeley location, gets the Broadway Plaza set. Manager Sam Stinson says although you'd think the new chains would have taken away from business, Yogurt Park has bragging rights.

"We were here first and we are located in the mall," she says.

Yogurt Castle is easy to spot in its turreted brick building at the corner of North California Boulevard and Bonanza Street. With its charming hand-written letters from Walnut Creek students framed on a wall, Yogurt Castle also has an old-fashioned call-in line where you can hear recordings of the day's flavors. It's less expensive than most new places.

Yoppi Yogurt in the Ygnacio Plaza shopping center, across Ygnacio Valley Road from Heather Farm Park, is similar to shops that emphasize their devotion to health lifestyles. Yoppi has fruit juice pellets as bright as salmon roe and customizes toppings for each of its two Bay Area locations. Customers get to vote on the self-serve flavors they like best.

Blush opened in early May in the strip mall next door to Whole Foods on Newell Avenue. This is Blush's fifth Bay Area location. This chain emphasizes organic, all-natural ingredients and features four yogurt flavors--two which rotate--and a selection of three dozen toppings.  The "original" is a plain yogurt, with a hint of tartness, that tastes wonderful with dark chocolate chips. 

Danville

Family-owned Yogurt Shack prides itself on candy toppings. Will a Blow-Pop, Candy Necklace or some Peach Rings fit on that self-serve yogurt? Listings are all in hand lettering, and being in the center of town on Hartz Avenue, it serves about 800 people per day in the summer.

Tutti Frutti over on Railroad Avenue has a more modern design, with water-fountain-sized areas for each self-serve flavor and offerings of yogurt smoothies.

San Ramon

Yogurtland- At this self-serve shop, a large panel explains yogurt in technical terms, like Streptococcus thermophilus. Yogurtland also serves a variety of flavors on a rotating basis such as Chocolate Coconut Truffle. The shop, located off Bollinger Canyon Road near Whole Foods, is part of a national chain, but the local manager isn't too corporate to fill up a large yogurt container of water for a panting dog.

Top This Yogurt doesn't give Yogurtland competition because it's over in Dougherty Valley (at the corner of Bollinger Canyon and Dougherty roads). With Tuesday night teen discounts it also stands out with old-fashioned whipped cream canisters and Red Vines.