California neighborhood choking on yogurt-maker's success
LOS ANGELES -- This is a story about yogurt, but it is also about entrepreneurship, financial and cultural expectations, beating the heat, beating the caloric system, and parking.
It's a feel-good story about an ambitious 32-year-old Korean woman whose small business has become successful beyond all reasonable expectations. And it's a feel-bad story about a sleepy neighborhood attacked, out of nowhere, by an army of frozen-yogurt fiends.
On Huntley Drive just south of Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, a small frozen-yogurt shop is nestled between a private home and NutriBliss, a natural sex-enhancement drugstore.
It's called Pinkberry, and it has become an obsession with weight-conscious Angelenos.
Pinkberry addicts come from Los Feliz, the Valley, South Bay, and Beverly Hills to get their fix. They circle their cars around the neighborhood looking for parking and wait patiently in lines that have been known to go up the block and around the corner.
It has been called ``Crackberry" and ``frozen heroin juice" by its fans and detractors because many of the college students, television writers, and well-to-do families who cheerfully queue up as many as four nights in a single week agree with food blogger Rosie O'Neill, who wrote recently: ``I would get Pinkberry IV'ed into my veins if I could."
Before Pinkberry opened on the site, there was a tattoo parlor and before that there was a medical marijuana distribution center and before that there was a garage.
Then 2 1/2 years ago, Hyekyung Hwang, who is called Shelly, signed a lease for the 600-square-foot space and decided to open an English tea room. The neighbors shook their heads, laughed, and wished her luck.
When she asked for outdoor seating, the neighbors voted it down. When she asked for a beer and wine license (so she could serve sherry), they voted that down, too.
Hwang crunched the numbers, and it didn't look good. She scrapped the idea and decided to open a frozen-yogurt store instead.
Hwang, the daughter of a factory owner in South Korea, came to America in 1992 for business school at the University of Southern California. She understands that people want food that is healthy and low-calorie and that they will pay more money for it than you might think.
Pinkberry yogurt is made with milk and is about 20 calories per ounce, and is topped with fresh fruit.
The store offers only two flavors of yogurt, plain and green tea. You cannot buy anything else, not even water. There is little waste and the staff can be trained in a few hours.
By February 2005, one month after it opened, Pinkberry was already turning a profit. The lines started that summer and the store now serves about 1,300 to 1,600 customers a day.
For neighbors, this success means Pinkberry trash on their lawns, and sometimes Pinkberry customers, too. The angriest of the neighbors stand outside at night to remind yogurt lovers that the street is all permit parking, and they will be ticketed if they park illegally. But even that doesn't always work.
``The bottom line is the customers that go to Pinkberry don't mind paying $68 for a tub of yogurt," said Huntley Avenue resident Oliver Wilson, handily adding the price of a parking ticket to the $7.45 cost of a large yogurt. ``It's all Escalades and Mercedes and BMWs. You tell them, `Don't park here,' and they do. They can afford it." 