Downtown yogurt shop lets customers customize desserts

After growing up in Columbia, Kerry Chao ventured to Taiwan and Washington, experimented with several occupations and entrepreneurial endeavors and brought home a sweet idea for a business.
Yogoluv, tucked beside the Missouri Theatre building downtown, is a new frozen yogurt shop with a twist as individualistic as Chao’s travels.

“Basically, it’s do-it-yourself frozen yogurt,” Chao said.
Yogoluv provides more than 10 flavors of yogurt and more than 30 toppings, which change slightly from time to time. Customers serve themselves, get their container weighed at the cash register and pay 30-cents per ounce, regardless of which flavors or toppings they choose.
“People ask me all the time if I created the concept, but I want people to know that it’s not something I came up with,” Chao said. “They have these on the coasts, in the larger cities. I just saw what I thought was an opportunity and a niche that could be filled.”
Chao said that letting customers make their own desserts is a competitive advantage because they know they will get exactly what they want.
Yogoluv patron Michelle Crews Spry agreed. “”I love Yogoluv,” she said. “Best invention ever. You get as much or little as you like and fix it the way you like it.”

However, patron Jeneva Powell said she’s not a fan of the distinctive yogurt taste. “It all tastes sour,” she said.
Comments from customers more often echoed the sentiments expressed by Scott Wilson: “Love me some Yogoluv. No fat, great flavors and toppings.”
Yogoluv opened less than six months ago on Nov. 28.
Chao is the majority owner. He was born and raised in Columbia but left after graduating from MU in 1995. First he went to Taiwan, where he started as an English teacher and found himself working in international marketing for the software company Ulead.
He returned to Columbia and started the Chinese restaurant Okii Mama with his mother, Wan-Tshih H. Chao.

Next, Kerry Chao left Columbia again to help start a nightclub in Washington D.C. In August of 2005, Chao launched the K Street Lounge, named for the street on which it is still located, known for the lobbying firms that populate it.
“I did that for about a year and a half, and it was wildly successful,” Chao said. “We were the first club in the K Street Corridor, and now everyone wants to be there.”
Chao said he left to pursue a career in commercial real estate because he believed it offered greater, more stable opportunities.
“Then the real estate bubble burst,” he said. So he headed back home to Columbia.
“I had originally looked at doing a yogurt place back in 2005,” he said. “It’s been something I’ve thought about for a long time.”
Yogoluv is located in a tiny space, just 680 square feet, off to the side of the Missouri Theatre on the corner of Ninth and Locust streets.
“We originally looked at a location further down Ninth Street,” Chao said. “We looked at this place and thought it was way too small. But it was such a good location that we decided to see if we could make it work.”

Chao said business has been good so far and that very little formal effort has been put into marketing.
“When we first started, I just did flyers here in the store encouraging people to come back and bring their friends,” he said. “We really wanted people to come here through word of mouth, and it seems to be working.”
“Later I was approached by College Coupons, and we started advertising with them,” he said. College Coupons is an online service that provides coupons that can be printed from a personal computer. “The last I heard, we came in No. 1. We’re the most downloaded and printed coupon on the site [in Columbia].”
Chao said he finds himself wondering how business will be in the coming months.
“Summer’s great because it’s hot, and everyone wants to get a frozen treat, so we’ve got that going for us,” he said. “But I’m kind of waiting to see what happens without the students. When we opened, it was the dead of winter, and we did pretty well without the customer base that we have now.”

Today, Yogoluv employs eight to 10 employees, all of whom are part time except for the manager, Ben Huang, who is a part owner and Chao’s cousin. Chao said he thinks about expanding to other locations but is not making any definite plans.
He said he’s staying focused and wants to be realistic about his potential for growth. “I don’t kid myself with delusions of grandeur.”