Pinkberry

Pinkberry is a franchise of frozen dessert restaurants headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.[3] There are currently over 260 stores in 20 countries. The first store was opened in January 2005 by Hye Kyung (Shelly) Hwang and Young Lee.[4] The restaurant allows customers to customize their yogurt with a variety of toppings.

History

Hwang's first business venture was to open a formal English teahouse on a tiny residential street called Huntley Drive in West Hollywood, California. However, after the city refused to approve an alcohol permit for Hwang and her business partner, architect Young Lee, they decided to go with their second plan, which was a frozen yogurt concept reviving the craze of the 1980s.[5] People were soon driving across town and standing in line for up to 20 to 30 minutes to get their fix of "the taste that launched 1,000 parking tickets."[4] The second store opened in August 2006 and the third one on La Brea and Melrose avenues in early September 2006.[6]

Controversy

Originally marketing its product as frozen yogurt, Pinkberry has faced complaints of fraud because it does not meet the California Department of Food and Agriculture's definition of frozen yogurt because it does not contain the necessary amount of bacterial cultures per ounce. The Los Angeles Times sent samples of Pinkberry's product to a lab and revealed that Pinkberry did contain active yogurt cultures, but it does not contain the minimum amount of culture to call itself frozen yogurt, according to California state law.[13] According to the Los Angeles Times, Pinkberry's product had 69,000 bacterial cultures per gram, compared to 200,000 for Baskin-Robbins. The National Yogurt Association (NYA) established its own criteria for live and active culture yogurt. For manufacturers to carry their Live and Active Culture seal, refrigerated yogurt products must contain at least 100 million cultures per gram at the time of manufacture, and frozen yogurt products must contain 10 million cultures per gram at the time of manufacture. This level was based on a survey of leading research scientists involved in clinical studies of the health attributes associated with live and active culture yogurt.[14]

Pinkberry appears to have altered its dessert recipe and has now earned the right to call its product real yogurt. Pinkberry officially received the Live and Active Cultures Seal from the National Yogurt Association on April 17, 2008, almost three years after the initial "real yogurt" lawsuit was filed.[15]

The Pinkberry jingle heard on its website is sung by the 1980s musician Tigra, from L'Trimm. Apparently in response to the recent lawsuit against Pinkberry claiming that its product is not "real yogurt", for a while Pinkberry had removed all lyrics to this jingle on its website except for the word "Pinkberry", which repeats over and over again at the chorus (prior to this change, the jingle had lyrics that characterized Pinkberry's product as "yogurt", and compared its product as better than ice cream).[16]

The unproven health benefits attributed to yogurt that were previously posted on the walls of Pinkberry (e.g., cures colon cancer, fights yeast infections) have been removed.[17]

type	Subsidiary
founder	Shelly Hwang Young Lee
foundation	January 2005 in West Hollywood, California
location	Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
area served	Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, United Kingdom, United States, Cameroon
key people	Eric Lefebvre, CEO‡R1R‡
owner	MTY Food Group
parent	Kahala Brands (2015–present)
industry	Restaurants
products	Frozen yogurt Smoothies Fruit Parfait Fresh Fruit Bowl
num locations	260 restaurants‡R2R‡
homepage	pinkberry.com

History

Branding and placement

Controversy

See also

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

References