Froyo Returns to Britain With Queues and Slow Growth
The queue starts before the spoon
Kiersten Paterno is 19 and a student, and this year she waited 45 minutes for a cup of frozen yoghurt. Froyo — frozen yoghurt that customers flavour and top themselves at a bar — is a dessert where the buyer does the assembling. “It was a 45-minute wait for my turn but the whole experience of choosing your flavours and customising it with different toppings was a big part of the appeal for me.” [1] The pot is not cheap. A tub can cost as much as £12, and Paterno says she does not mind spending a little more as an occasional treat. What she wanted was control: “I could control how sweet I wanted it to be through the toppings. It feels healthier overall as it’s a dessert I can enjoy without feeling like I’ve overindulged.” Several brands such as Go Greek, Myka and Yo-Chi launched in London this year, while Frurt, which operates mainly in the north west of England and Yorkshire, has opened new stores, including one in Leicester. Paterno was one of many customers willing to queue up to an hour, and these companies have seen hundreds of customers queueing to build their own dessert pot.
A market that died and returned
The money behind the queues is growing slowly. Market Data Forecast estimates the European frozen yoghurt market at £434m in 2026, up from £419m a year earlier. That is £15m more, or roughly 3.6%.
Britain has been here before. Froyo was a huge trend in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and London was its centre: Snog ran 10 stores in the capital at its peak, while AngelBerry had shops in Bristol and Brighton. By the end of that decade the category was all but dead.
Vhari Russell, founder of Food Marketing Experts, says: “Market over-saturation played a role in the initial disappearance of froyo, as well as the natural cycle of dying trends.” [1]
Sweetness, control and who arrives
The Australian brand Yo-Chi opened a Notting Hill branch in August and grew quickly on social media for its range of toppings and its “third space” feel — a venue that is neither home nor workplace, where people stay rather than pass through. Bethan Clarke, Yo-Chi’s campaign manager, points to small purchases rather than large ones: “Sweet treat culture is huge. People aren’t spending a fortune on big things, but a little thing like that, they’re happy to.” [1] Froyo is usually lower in calories and fat than ice cream, but it may also contain more added sugar. Yo-Chi would “never call ourselves healthy”, and Clarke says customisation means customers control their own portion sizes and sugar levels.
Clarke points to nostalgia as a driver: “People are coming back to re-experience childhood a little bit.” Ella Light, who also works for Yo-Chi, says she has been surprised by the mix of people coming into the store: “I was kind of expecting to see the Gen Z girlies coming in, [but] this morning there was a group of builders!”