Seattle Froyo Update

 

Fro-yo girl here. About 12 years ago, I used to visit Seattle regularly, and I visited most of the froyo shops there. When I first started visiting, there were a few local shops like Crazy Cherry (inspired by Pinkberry), Utopia, Café Koi, and old-school Shy Giant at Pike Place Market. Boba shops in the U District like Citra started offering froyo. Cafes like Jewel Box Café and Sprout also started offering froyo.

I witnessed the rise of the self-serve froyo shops in Seattle, with the opening of multiple branches of Menchie’s and Yogurtland. Menchie’s was the first to open a self-serve shop in Seattle back in 2010. Yogurtland had six locations in Washington and they’ve all closed. Menchie’s has 21 locations in Washington, with two of these in Seattle proper.

Quite a few froyo shops have opened and closed since that time, including Zoeyogurt, Cool Whirled, Yeti Yogurt, Refresh, Red Mango, TCBY, Chill, Froyo Fresh, etc. Some froyo shops that closed were replaced by other froyo shops (e.g., Yogurtland became Refresh, Menchie’s University Village became Chill).

YoYo and CoCo opened in Wallingford in 2022. It was the first shop in the US that offered froyo cubes, a trend that started in China. It was open for a year. Interestingly, another yogurt cube shop opened in Bellevue in 2023. It’s called Lucky Cube.

Current Froyo Shops

• Menchie’s Queen Anne, 2101 Queen Anne Ave North
• Menchie’s Admiral, 2620 California Ave SW, Ste 400
• Shy Giant, 1500 Pike Pl #16, Seattle, WA 98101

Hellenika Cultured Creamery, 1920a Pike Pl, Seattle, WA 98101, offers gelato style scoopable cultured gelato, from the family that founded Ellenos. But they do not call their product froyo.

For a city with a population of 757,992 in 2024, that’s not many froyo shops. 

You know you love me. X0 X0, fro-yo girl.

Looking for more frozen yogurt news, discussion boards, and resources? Check out the International Frozen Yogurt Association website at http://internationalfrozenyogurt.com/. The IFYA is the independent voice of the frozen yogurt industry.

Fro-yo Seattle Report: Shy Giant Frozen Yogurt

Fro-yo girl here. I finally made it to Shy Giant Frozen Yogurt (which was closed for a couple of months during the Pike Place Market renovation), Seattle’s first frozen yogurt shop. When it opened its doors in 1976, it was the first fro-yo shop in the Pacific Northwest and the second on the West Coast (it’s even older than Yogurt Park in Berkeley, CA). Shy Giant feels like a historic fro-yo place. 

Shy Giant is on its third owner now and it still offers custom flavored fro-yo. They chop up fruit and add it to the fro-yo. 

It was interesting to see their old signs (the signs look like they’re from the 1970s). One menu board lists yogurt, tofu and yodolo. They had frozen tofu! I’m not sure what Yodolo was. They no longer offer tofu or Yodolo. Their soft serve machines look as old as the shop. They offer 4 fro-yo flavors a day, Snoqualmie ice cream, smoothies, hot apple cider and hot chocolate. 

Shy Giant does have tart fro-yo flavors. The texture is very thick, stiff, creamy and dense. It reminded me of mix-in style fro-yo even though it did come from a soft serve machine.

You know you love me. X0 X0, fro-yo girl.

* SHY GIANT: 1500 Pike Place, Space 15, Seattle, WA