Frozen yoghurt brands expand in UK as £12 treats draw queues

London openings lead a wider UK frozen yoghurt revival

Frozen yoghurt brands are opening shops across the UK, attracting customers willing to spend as much as £12 on a customised dessert. Go Greek, Myka and Australian operator Yo-Chi have launched in London, while Frurt has added locations outside the capital, BBC Business reports.

The expansion extends beyond the category’s established London base. Frurt, whose operations are concentrated in north-west England and Yorkshire, has opened in Leicester. Yo-Chi entered Notting Hill in August, with its choice of toppings and appeal as a place to spend time gaining attention on social media, according to BBC Business.

The openings come against a backdrop of modest European market growth. Market Data Forecast estimates cited by BBC Business put the region’s frozen yoghurt market at £434m in 2026, compared with £419m the previous year. That is a £15m increase, or approximately 3.6%.

Some operators have attracted queues involving hundreds of customers, BBC Business reports. The demand offers an encouraging early signal for new shops, although opening-day interest alone does not establish how frequently customers will return.

A second chance after the 2010s retreat

Britain’s previous frozen yoghurt boom took hold in the late 2000s and early 2010s. London was its strongest market: Snog reached 10 shops in the capital at its peak, while AngelBerry operated in Bristol and Brighton, according to BBC Business.

The competitive field subsequently broadened to include Yog, Yoomoo and Pinkberry. By the end of the 2010s, the category had largely faded from prominence, BBC Business reports, leaving today’s entrants with a recent example of how quickly a popular food format can lose momentum.

Health perceptions also complicated the earlier proposition. Consumers began questioning whether frozen yoghurt was necessarily a better choice than other desserts. BBC Business notes that it generally contains less fat and fewer calories than ice cream, but can contain more added sugar — a distinction that makes unqualified health messaging difficult for operators.

Customers value control, nostalgia and an outing

Student Kiersten Paterno, 19, told BBC Business that she waited 45 minutes for her dessert. Choosing flavours and toppings was an important part of the attraction, rather than simply a delay before receiving the product. She also valued being able to determine her portion size and sweetness, and regarded the higher price as acceptable for an occasional purchase.

Yo-Chi campaign manager Bethan Clarke linked demand to consumers’ willingness to make smaller discretionary purchases. “People aren't spending a fortune on big things, but a little thing like that, they're happy to,” she told BBC Business. That positions the product as a manageable indulgence rather than an everyday staple.

Clarke also drew a boundary around Yo-Chi’s nutritional positioning, telling BBC Business the company would “never call ourselves healthy”. Her emphasis was on the customer’s ability to choose quantities and toppings. She connected renewed interest to nostalgia, with social-media references to 2016 helping introduce the format to another wave of customers.

The audience has been broader than some staff expected. Yo-Chi employee Ella Light told BBC Business she had anticipated a predominantly young female customer base but had also seen a group of builders visiting. Her account suggests operators should avoid assuming that online visibility identifies the full in-store audience.

Vhari Russell, founder of Food Marketing Experts, attributed the earlier downturn partly to overcrowding among operators and partly to changing fashions. Speaking to BBC Business, she described today’s purchase as an “affordable luxury” and argued that customers can value the outing itself, rather than judging the price solely against the food in the pot.

Repeat visits will test the expansion opportunity

BBC Business’s report does not set out further opening schedules or store targets for Go Greek, Myka, Yo-Chi or Frurt. For businesses considering UK entry, the next commercial test is therefore not an announced national rollout but whether the current attention translates into sustained demand. The source provides no sales, profitability or repeat-visit figures with which to assess that yet.

The revival creates a practical positioning choice for entrants: compete primarily on the dessert, or build a proposition around customer choice and time spent in the shop. The latter could require a different approach to store layout and service capacity. Long queues can generate visibility, but operators still need to make the experience convenient enough for customers who are not visiting for the novelty.

For European expansion, the regional market estimate is a useful starting point rather than evidence that every city can support another operator. Assessing local competition and likely purchase frequency before committing to a site would help entrants distinguish a durable trading opportunity from a short-lived burst of interest.