Pinkberry
usnook | 2013-08-09 16:05

 

Pinkberry is a franchise of upscale frozen dessert restaurants headquartered in Los Angeles, California. There are currently over 100 stores, mostly located in Southern California and New York City.

The first store opened in January 2005 by Hye Kyung (Shelly) Hwang and Young Lee. The tart, frozen dessert has a groupie-like following. The company acknowledges its cult-like following by maintaining a "groupie corner" on its website.

History

Original Pinkberry restaurant on Huntley Drive near Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California.
 

Hwang's first business venture was to open a formal English teahouse on a tiny residential street called Huntley Drive in West Hollywood, California.

However, after the city refused to approve an alcohol permit for Hwang and her business partner, architect Young Lee, they decided to go with their second plan, which was a frozen yogurt concept reviving the craze of the 1980s. People were soon driving across town and standing in line for up to 20 to 30 minutes to get their fix of "the taste that launched 1,000 parking tickets." The second store opened in September 2006, and since then, stores began springing up all over Southern California and also branches in New York. In October 2009, Pinkberry opened its first overseas branch in the State of Kuwait at the Avenues shopping mall, and in November it opened a branch in Dallas.

On October 16, 2007, the firm took in a $27.5M investment from Maveron, the venture fund founded by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, to expand the firm's concept nationwide.

 


A Pinkberry location in the Mall of the Emirates, Dubai.

On May 1, 2009, Pinkberry announced its plans to expand its market both internationally and domestically, after receiving $9 million in second-round funding from investors. As part of its plans, Pinkberry has partnered with Kuwaiti retail conglomerate M.H. Alshaya Co. to open stores in several countries in the Middle East and signed with HMSHost to open locations in airports nationwide, the first of which will open in the late summer 2009. In 2010, the company will start to expand in the Southern United States. In April 2010, the original Pinkberry store in West Hollywood, still lacking adequate parking, was closed and converted into an administrative building for the chain.

The company's success led to the launching of numerous competitors offering similar product, as well as the entry into the U.S. market of Red Mango, an already-existing South Korean company with a similar business model. it was estimated that a single Pinkberry store receives more than 1,500 customers per day and can bring in $250,000 a month.

In January 2012, cofounder Young Lee was arrested on an outstanding warrant for assault with a deadly weapon, issued in June 2011 after Lee beat a homeless man with a tire iron. Lee was on a flight inbound from Korea when the LAPD was notified by a federal database. Prosecutors said Lee and another man chased the homeless man and "beat him down" with the tire iron because Lee found the transient's sexually explicit tattoo offensive. LAPD officials said that Lee demanded that the man kneel and apologize, the man consented, but Lee attacked him anyway, chasing him down, kicking him and "beating him down" with a tire iron.

Pinkberry's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Design Laura Jakobsen responded to the Young Lee arrest with this statement that firmly distances the co-founder from the company's current operations:

"Mr. Young Lee has no involvement with Pinkberry, our partners or our more than 170 stores world-wide. Pinkberry ended its ties with Mr. Lee formally on May 1, 2010. He has no influence or input into the company in any way, and the parties have not been in communication with one another since Mr. Lee's exit. While it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on the allegations in question, we can say without hesitation that Pinkberry values the communities we serve and stands against acts of violence of any kind, especially those involving the most vulnerable among us."

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