NEW YORK Frozen yogurt is back, and the long lines at Pinkberry, the largest in a new crop of concepts here, are forcing the company to make operational changes to handle the volume.
The chain, launched in Los Angeles in 2004, opened its first unit in New York last fall, and has added three more since as part of a plan to open more than 24 by the end of next year. There are currently 25 outlets in California.
But nothing prepared Dane Morrissey, area director for Pinkberry’s New York franchisee, 4sunkids inc., for the crowds. A typical customer, a thirtysomething designer, said on a recent afternoon at Pinkberry’s first Manhattan unit, near the Empire State Building, that she visits her local Pinkberry, on the Upper East Side, five times a week, sometimes twice a night, for a $5.96 yogurt with three toppings.
To keep the operation running smoothly, Morrissey said 4sunkids, Pinkberry’s largest franchisee, is looking for larger locations, rethinking the customer flow, and making accommodations in the back room to handle deliveries and production.
Pinkberry has also had to face the glare of the media. Earlier this summer someone with a video camera caught the image of mice in one location, which ended up on TV, a problem the franchisee raced to fix. “We took the opportunity to tighten up the restaurants physically,” Morriessey said. All entries of pipes and wiring are specially sealed. The exterminator makes twice-weekly inspections, and the crew has a new anti-rodent routine and check list.
The original store size in New York was 600 to 800 square feet. Now the company is looking for locations with 1,000 square feet of space. “We are constantly revisiting our location selection,” said Morrissey, a veteran of the Cosi chain. “Our original footprint is too tight for the volume we are doing.” The locations typically have seating for 12 to 25.
The concept’s menu is simple. There are two choices of yogurt, plain and green tea, and a selection of toppings, including fresh raspberries, blackberries, mango and dry items like granola, chocolate chips and Cap’n Crunch cereal. A large Green Tea with three toppings costs nearly $10.
Everything is prepared daily in each store versus at a commissary. Fruit and dairy products are delivered six days a week. To ensure proper refrigeration, Pinkberry worked with its dairy to have drivers bring milk and yogurt from the truck right into each unit’s refrigerators.
The stores that can accommodate them have walk-ins, or there are traditional reach-in refrigerators outfitted with curtains. The company uses two fruit suppliers, one just for berries.
Each unit has about 15 employees. Fruit is cut twice a day. It is merchandised in pans outfitted with drip trays that keep the fruit elevated so it doesn’t get stewed in its juice and lose its vital look. All fruit trays are labeled with dots for the time and day of production. All fruit is washed, hand-peeled and cut. Fruit cutters start before 9 a.m. to prepare for the 11:30 a.m. opening. Chocolate, carob and yogurt chips are displayed in trays over ice baths so they don’t melt.
The frozen treats are made from “real yogurt and real nonfat milk in every batch without any preservatives or binders,” said Morrissey. The product—the recipe is kept secret--requires a lot of stirring, he said. In California, Pinkberry was hit with a lawsuit last spring over whether it could call its product frozen yogurt because it allegedly includes a powdered base. The words “frozen yogurt” have been taken off the company’s website.
Since opening in New York last fall, the franchisee has replaced its soft-serve machines with water-cooled units versus air-cooled, which Morrissey terms a “better product.”
To accommodate long lines, the customer flow has been tweaked. Before, customers lined up at two registers at the serving counter. Now there is a separate island with two cash registers, which should allow the line to move faster, Morrissey said. The company also changed its POS system to allow for quicker cash drawer changes, 15 seconds versus several minutes. “Those two minutes can be very frustrating when a guest wants to place an order,” he said.
