Viral frozen yogurt is coming to London this week
This Thursday
London is getting a new dessert option this week: frozen yogurt from Yo-Chi.
Yo-Chi was established in Australia more than a decade ago, and it opens its first UK branch on 20th August, as the brand revelaed on Instagram.
Yo-Chi Notting Hill Gate will live at 81–85 Notting Hill Gate. That’s right by Notting Hill Gate station, on the former site of a Le Pain Quotidien branch.
It will serve six-plus flavours of frozen yoghurt, which is gluten-free and low in fat compared to normal ice cream, and you can load it up with all sorts of toppings to undo all those initial health benefits.
Yo-Chi has been around in Australia since 2012, but it only became massive after the brand was taken over in 2020 by Oliver and Riley Allis. At the time there were just four Yo-Chi stores, but there are now upwards of 70.
Pay as you weigh
One of the more unusual parts is Yo-Chi has a self serve model, and you pay by weight. You take your cup, pick your frozen yoghurt flavour(s) choose your toppings, from fruit to mochi and cookies, and then pay. We haven’t yet seen the setup to confirm everything will work the same in London as it does in Australia, but the Notting Hill site is bigger than you might guess.
It’s a two-storey location with upwards of 2000 square feet of space. And the idea is to make Yo-Chi into a hang out and date spot, not somewhere you just nip into for a quick treat.
“People go on dates there, mates meet up there, you get every age in the room at once, all having a good time together. That's what we want to bring to Notting Hill – somewhere to actually spend an evening, not just pop into,” Oliver Allis told Broadsheet.
He says the UK expansion is the result of fans of the Aussie chain asking when it would come over here.
“People were messaging us asking when we're opening in London, tagging their mates, sending us videos begging us to come over,” says Allis.
“At some point you can't ignore that. We thought, alright, they want it, let's go listen to them and get over there. So this launch genuinely started with the fans, not with us deciding London needed a Yo-Chi.”
Over in Australia you pay $4.20 for 100g, which equates to around £2.21, although pricing for the London branch is yet to be confirmed.
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