With a greater focus on healthy living, Americans favor frozen yogurt and smoothies that contain fewer calories and healthier ingredients over traditional sweets.
Besides popularity, many frozen yogurt franchises bring additional benefits to business owners. Marketing assistance, development support teams, and detailed training on business growth and development are just a few of the perks these franchises offer.
Industry Overview
The frozen yogurt industry represents one of the most popular and fastest-growing among all other dessert categories.
This health-conscious trend is going strong, and long-term growth is almost inevitable.
Furthermore, the popular self-serve stores easily cater to consumers’ desires for their perfect dessert while maintaining employee expenses to a minimum.
When it comes to marketing, some franchises combine menu items not common for frozen desserts. This approach helps franchisors to establish themselves as a fast-food store as well, increasing popularity among those looking for a quick snack or a meal. A franchise of this nature is a lucrative business opportunity.
Frozen yogurt franchises created a unique niche around healthy frozen desserts. Often, these franchises also have decadent smoothie and ice cream options on their menu.
The Different Types of Frozen Yogurt Franchises
While franchise fees are typically around $40,000, total investment can be upwards of $100,000. Understanding that not everyone might be in a position to invest such a sum, the frozen yogurt industry has developed a few different types of franchise stores:
Self-Serve Stores
Locations where consumers apply toppings by themselves.
Indoor Stores
These franchises find a perfect spot in malls, higher-class restaurants, movie theaters, etc.
Outdoor Stores
These places provide outdoor sitting and umbrellas, allowing consumers to sit and enjoy their frozen desserts while keeping overhead costs low.
Mobile Stores (Carts)
This is the most flexible and lowest-cost option. In a way, these carts act like traditional ice cream trucks. They don't have one classic retail location and travel to where their consumers are—often parks, league games, and other events.
The Top Frozen Yogurt Franchises
No matter the category you choose, there are several great frozen yogurt franchises to choose from. We’ve selected five that have been going strong and are not stopping.
Menchie’s
Menchie’s franchise is a market leader within the frozen yogurt industry. With over 19% of the nation's market, their franchise network has kept growing, even at hard times when the competition has been struggling.
With over 540 stores, Menchie's Frozen Yogurt offers close to 100 flavors and more than 70 toppings. Some individual stores keep their flavors in rotation, maintaining up to 16 at a time. Their products include no-added-sugar products, low carb, dairy-free, gluten-free, kosher, and nonfat options.
The initial investment goes from $300,000 to $350,000 with royalty fees of 6%.
Yogurtland
With a little less than 16% market share, Yogurtland can be positioned as the second leading franchise within this category.
Yogurtland is the pioneer of using a self-serving interactive model.
Customers can mix and match yogurt with toppings as per personal preference. There is even an option allowing customers to bring their own yogurt.
They offer low-fat and nonfat flavors, no-added-sugar yogurt, and non-dairy choices, as well as ice cream and milk containing no added hormones or antibiotics. As a cherry on top, their fruit flavors are rich in vitamin C.
To join this franchise, you will need to invest a total of $270,000 to $590,000, with royalty fees of 6%.
Red Mango
The third-largest frozen yogurt brand in the industry, Red Mango, has a little over 9% market share.
The difference Red Mango brings to the table is the broader business model. Red Mango stores offer parfaits, freshly squeezed juice, smoothies, salads, and wraps.
Being health-conscious, they proudly promote their brand’s lack of artificial preservatives and flavors. The National Yogurt Association certification even provided them the Live and Active Cultures seal.
If you join this franchise, you can choose from full-service and self-service stores or kiosks. The initial investment needed ranges from $194,000 to $466,000, with a royalty fee of 6% and an ad fee of 3%.
TCBY
TCBY, or The Country’s Best Yogurt, follows Red Mango's steps, sharing a similar market share.
With TCBY, it’s like watching part of history. Back in the 1980s, they developed the frozen yogurt franchise concept, which brought them over 3000 stores the following decade.
However, with the growth and expansion of the market, their revenues drastically fell. With the market stabilization, they rose again to 360 stores.
Half of their stores offer self-serving methods, while some stores pair with Mrs. Fields products, a dessert and cookie brand. They also offer vegan options, as well as coffee, muffins, and even cookie-and-yogurt sandwiches.
You could join this franchise for $200,000 to $500,000, with a 6% royalty fee and a 2% ad fee.
Sweetfrog
With a bit over 8% market share, Sweetfrog is the youngest of the listed frozen yogurt brands here. Being open for 12 years, they currently operate over 300 stores.
Sweet Frog is mainly concentrated on the US East Coast, as there is relatively less competition compared to the other country parts.
Their stores offer a great mix of yogurt flavors, toppings, Belgian waffles, waffle bowls, cones, and banana splits.
With royalty fees of 5%, the initial investment goes from $96,000 to $480,000.
Now, It’s Your Choice!
As people change their habits and look for healthier options, it is expected that the frozen yogurt industry will keep on growing.
People will always have that sweet tooth, so why not be the one who will offer them an option for both the healthy and the sweet?
If the above selections don’t satisfy that sweet tooth, Franchise123 offers thousands more franchise options to choose from.
