UPDATE: 07/22/2010
It looks like Yogurt Ville has been busy and has new locations in the DFW area. Check out all the locations here:
Here in Texas the upscale non-fat frozen yogurt craze is fairly new, as such there are a lot of different companies trying to capitalize on the craze started in Korea, moved to California and now is making waves in Dallas,TX. The store that started the trend is a store called Red Mango out of Korea, which spawned many copy cats including PinkBerry, BerryBerry, Bliss, and now Yogurtville.
One thing about the other copy cats to Red Mango is that they are all over-the-counter shops where you point to the toppings you want, and someone over the counter places the toppings for you. With Yogurtville, you choose the yogurt you like, you scoop the toppings, and you weight the result. That’s right they charge you per weight. Right now its $.35 per ounce. Pretty novel idea, the more you eat, the more you pay.
Yogurt
Another thing that sets Yogurtville apart is the yogurt flavor choices. You can pick from the original tart that all the others have. You can also choose very vanilla, strawberry, strawberry banana, pistachio, blueberry, raspberry, Belgian chocolate, hawaiian delight, and probably many more. You can mix and match any of these flavors you like.
Toppings
As for the toppings, they have a lot of the same that the others do such as fresh fruits like strawberries, kiwis, mango, grapes. Toppings that are missing that we found prevalent at BerryBerry, PinkBerry, Bliss, and others are blueberries, bananas, raspberries, blackberries, and “Fresh” pineapples (they had “canned pineapples”). As for the dry toppings they had an array of sugar cereals like fruity pebbles, captain crunch, cinnamon toast crunch, granola, and grapenuts. They also had an assortment of other toppings like coconut, mochi, yogurt chips, chocolate chips, Reese’s pieces, brownie bits, M&M’s, gummy bears, whoppers, rainbow kisses, and the list goes on and on.
Final Verdict
Yogurtville has an overall clean, modern, and energizing feel to it. You can tell alot of time and effort went into the look and feel of the place. It seems like the owner took the best of what worked from the other stores and just gave it a little tweak. One negative was the absence of fresh blueberries and raspberries that was at all of the other stores. I think this was a conscious choice by the owner to give you these kinds of flavors in the yogurt itself. It is apparent that the owner has overloaded the topping bar with cheaper toppings like candies and cereals and skimped on the more expensive fruit.
In my brief talk to the owner, I asked him how he came up with the idea for the place and he mentioned he was from Las Vegas and had plans to open 12 more in the dallas area. He also said the idea for the store was 2 years in the making with plans to franchise in the next couple months. I think with all the elements going for him, he will give the competition a run for their money.
Their website is still in the works but this will be the address: http://www.yogurtvilleusa.com/
If you’re in the Dallas area, here is the address to their location:
3220 E. Hebron Pkwy #114, Carrollton, TX 75010 972.862.8000 Google Map
