TCBY Featured in the Boston Globe

TCBY was featured this week in an article from the Boston Globe titled, "The great froyo gold rush." The article ran this week discussing the rise in frozen yogurt chains across the country over the past few years and the long time history that TCBY has had in the frozen desserts category.

The question is, are people investing in the right industry or is it just a fad that will die out? Well, right now, we can tell you the industry is as healthy as ever and people can invest while the time is ripe. With the long-standing brand recognition of TCBY and the adaptive nature of the company, we are here to say the brand will continue to stick around.

Click here to read the full article

The great froyo gold rush

Are frozen yogurt entrepreneurs cashing in on the next big thing — or betting their fortunes on a fad?

By Daniel McGinn

 |    

  MAY 26, 2013

JUST AFTER 7 O’CLOCK on a March evening, the lights go down in a function room at Maggiano’s Little Italy in the Back Bay. As a video flickers to life on a projection screen, an upbeat female voice begins narrating. “If you’re like most people, you’ve probably dreamed of what it would be like to be your own boss, make your own schedule, call the shots, and reap the benefits of your hard work,” she says. As the audience picks at stuffed mushrooms and fried zucchini, she chirps on: “There’s never been a better time to take control of your future.”

In Hollywood’s most famous moment of career advising, Mr. McGuire pulls Benjamin Braddock outside by the pool to deliver just one word: plastics. The opportunity being described in this restaurant basement will require four: self-serve frozen yogurt.

The host of tonight’s franchising pitch is TCBY, which opened its first frozen yogurt shop in Arkansas in 1981. Although the chain would introduce the rest of the country to froyo, it had actually been in invented in Massachusetts a decade earlier, when an employee of the H.P. Hood dairy company sent regular yogurt through a soft-serve ice cream machine. A Harvard Square eatery called the Spa is said to have served the world’s first cone of “frogurt” on February 3, 1971.

Frozen yogurt went mainstream during the health craze of the ’80s, only to fizzle over the next two decades — a period in which TCBY franchisees were forced to close some two-thirds of the chain’s 1,500 stores. Now, however, a resurgence is upon us and TCBY is rebounding with a new formula: self-serve stores where customers can mix and match flavors, pick from dozens of toppings, and pay by the ounce. Since 2010, TCBY has opened 124 self-serve stores around the country — it expects to have about 100 more in development by year’s end — but not one in Massachusetts. (To continue reading article, click here)