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Yo-Chi goes global: Cult favourite frozen yoghurt chain is growing up
By Jessica Yun
Cult favourite Australian frozen yoghurt chain, Yo-Chi, has been on a growth spurt. Within 12 months it has opened nearly two dozen new stores, bringing the chain’s footprint to 56. The hype for the frozen self-serve dessert, fuelled by thumping music and neon lights, still attracts queues outside most stores on Friday and Saturday nights, but isn’t as feverish as it once was.
“We’ve gone from that small business to almost, like, a cultural moment, which is crazy to even say,” said brand director Oliver Allis. “But think the love is still super strong. We’re not as new as we were when we last spoke, but I think we’re still doing so many fun, positive things.”
Cult frozen yoghurt chain, Yo-Chi, is coming of age with the opening of its first international store, in Singapore.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Yo-Chi is not only growing up but going abroad: the chain made its global launch this weekend in Singapore’s Orchard Central, a 2.5-kilometre-long strip in an upscale shopping district, giving Singaporeans a taste of Australian frozen yoghurt for the first time.
Just for reference, gelato titan Messina has 30-odd stores in Australia, two in Hong Kong, and one in Singapore. Gelatissimo has around 60 but doesn’t command the same interest. Starbucks has over 80 in Australia and isn’t consistently profitable yet. By the end of 2024, Yo-Chi just about doubled the previous year’s sales to $53.7 million and made over $11.5 million in post-tax profits, according to documents filed to the corporate regulator.
Yo-Chi brand director, Oliver Allis. “We love being ahead of the trends.”Credit: Yo-Chi
“We saw Singapore really as a really strategic launch pad, hopefully to grow Yo-Chi in Asia. If we can prove ourselves in Singapore, it’s a really great starting point to then grow to Thailand, or China, or Japan, and places like that,” said Allis.
Singapore’s store will look and feel “exactly the same” as Yo-Chis in Australia, albeit with toppings like mango sago and gula melaka (palm sugar) syrup to suit local preferences. (Allis’ suggestion to include durian was shot down by his team with a “hard no”.) A new topping, “orange candy melon”, is coming soon to Australians. New yoghurt flavours are in the works.
“We love being ahead of the trends,” said Allis. “Once the trend has got traction and it starts going into mainstream, like [if] one of those fast food outlets like McDonald’s would ever consider doing one of these flavours, we’d never do it,” he said. “We need to make sure that we’re always beating them.”
Yo-Chi bears all the hallmarks of a millennial company: environmentally responsible, brand-savvy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, chronically online. Allis steers it with a mature palate (“I’m so cautious of not looking like a lolly store”) and a long-term lens on business relationships. Yo-Chi doesn’t suffer from a shortage of willing suitors and can afford to be picky. “We get emails every week about, can we be your partner in Singapore, the US, the UK,” said Allis.
“It’s such a special brand to protect … You want that that partner to have the same values and understand Yo-Chi isn’t just a tacky frozen yoghurt shop,” he said. “By the time you vet and do that process, there’s not heaps of people who fit the bill.”
The Orchard Central store is a 50-50 joint venture with a pair of local Singaporean retail operators, with whom the team “gelled really, really well”. Yo-Chi’s other collaborations, which include Pistachio Papi, KeepCup and homewares brand Hommey, are chosen carefully.
“If you wouldn’t want to have a beer with that company if that company was a person, then we don’t want to have a collaboration with them,” said Allis.
Bringing fro-yo back
Behind Yo-Chi’s success and reputation as the youth’s new nightclub is in the remarkable turnaround of both the business’ commercial fortunes and how it has resuscitated an entire dessert category after the boom and bust of the frozen yoghurt bubble of the mid-2015s.
Boost Juice founder, Janine Allis, is busy helping with family business Yo-Chi’s expansion beyond Australia.Credit:
The chain is a family affair: brand director Oliver’s mother is Janine Allis, the founder of Boost Juice, and has been assisting with the Singapore store opening. Her husband Jeff Allis is Yo-Chi’s co-chief executive. Aunts, uncles and cousins are involved elsewhere in property, design, people management. The Allis family purchased Yo-Chi, then only four stores, from former Masterchef judge George Calombaris in 2020 when his hospitality business Made Establishment collapsed.
Since then, Yo-Chi has claimed cities and territories across Australia and maintained its dominance. Despite copycats (‘Yo-Bar’) and new players (Freo and Oh My Yo in Sydney), Yo-Chi doesn’t yet have any credible rival in Australia, and might not in Singapore, either.
“We’re the first self-service acai over there, which is exciting. Testing the other yoghurts, the hype around frozen yoghurt hasn’t really hit Singapore, so there’s not much competition,” said Allis.
The network is almost entirely family-owned, but has sounded out interest from investors; private equity dealmaker Jonathon Pearce holds an 8 per cent stake. The chain is plotting for a global footprint of 400, and has signed joint venture agreements to open in the US and UK, according to the Australian Financial Review.
But Yo-Chi isn’t getting too big, Allis is quick to say. “We consider ourselves a business with soul,” he said.
“We’re putting more effort than ever to make sure that Yo-Chi still is about positivity and connecting with local communities … We’re always very cautious of sounding too big, or gone corporate, or anything like that.”
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