ChicBerry (Miami)
***** ChicBerry, 1689 Southwest 107 Avenue, Miami, Florida 33165, (305) 227-6792.
There is an old saying…”When it rains, it pours.” Got ANOTHER–self-serve yogurt joint for you, ChicBerry in Miami. The drill is simple, 12 “rotating” flavors and a topping bar—you fill your cup and it gets weighed. This joint gets 49 cents an ounce…
Regular readers know that old Jeff Eats sees FAD written all over the self serve yogurt business. Gonna be a nasty ending for most of the “players” in this arena. Best guess here, this game of musical chairs is going to end sometime during the next 2 years.
The other day I gave ChicBerry a shot. Tried green tea, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry…In defense of that 49 cents an ounce which is expensive for self-serve stuff—the yogurt was absolutely delicious. Not really a big fan of yogurt, that said, the flavors- matched up against the stuff that most of the “other” joints are selling is far superior.
You can check menu/flavors at www.chicberryusa.com.
I suspect, actually I know—in coming weeks and months, we’ll be “talking” about other self-serve yogurt joints. You do remember the “mom & pop” video store craze of a few years ago, don’t you? Seemingly, a video store or two on every corner. You also know how that one ended. Even a guy like Blockbuster collapsed. No question in my mind, same-thing is coming for the self serve folks.
Well—until the game ends, with maybe a handful of survivors…we’ll enjoy this latest fast food craze.
ChickBerry is open, Monday-Friday noon-11pm and Saturday-Sunday 1pm-11pm.
I really like your writing style. In addition to talking about food and decor and prices, you often discuss indutries and your thoughts on business concepts. Nice touch.
I also like the fact that unlike every other critic that I have ever seen or read or heard, you don’t go into detail on how the food was made and the details of what was in it. You are right to the point you either like the food or as you sometimes call it stuff or you don’t like it. Blunt and right to the point.
Thanks for the really enjoyable blog.
The yogurt is very good.
Unlike the video store craze which was really done in by technology, the self serve yogurt concept will survive. How long have the Carvels, Baskin-Robbins, Rita’s, and your local ice cream shop been in business? This is a comfort food, offering the experience is a do it yourself sundae and it’s a perceived health food snack and social gathering spot as well. The strong will survive and we will be enjoying the self serve yogurt business for years to come.
rick snyder,
What I love about Jeff Eats is that its columns in addition to restaurant reviews sometimes have thought provoking items like this one, as to whether or not self serve will survive.
I think that if you check, Jeff has a huge background in the franchise business. He was involved with Discovery Zone and Johnny Rockets. I have personally met Jeff and his blog bio doesn’t really begin to tell you about his background in the fast food business and restaurant business.
On the subject at hand, I agree with Jeff that self serve is a fad. For sure some businesses will survive but I think he is right on the money with the prediction that most will fail.
You mention Baskin Robbins. What you don’t mention is that BR was doing so poorly that it had to be incorporated into Dunkin Donuts to survive.
On Carvel. How many are there? In my neighborhood in Boca there is only 1 .
On ice cream shops, I think that maybe there are excluding the self-serve stores 4 maybe 5 in all of Boca.
As for Rita’s Ice. Tell me how many are there. There is only 1 in Boca.
More important, I’ll bet you anything that you’d like, that the Rita owner in Boca and Carvel owner in Boca barely sweats out a working living from their stores. I’ll even go further and bet that if they could get their investments out they would run from the business.
Self Serve will soon be oversaturated. I guess you don’t recall the first yogurt craze about 15 years ago. The big player was THIS CANT BE YOGURT. TCBY. Not around today, are they? They died just like the fad they got wrapped into.
For your info, I was part of a partnership that owned 41 Hardee’s so I have some understanding of what the franchise game is all about.
Only time will tell how self serve will work out.
I’ll bet you that in 2-3 years the people who are running to build these stores will be very unhappy campers.
I vote with Jeff on this one.
Self Serve Yogurt Business will prove to be a disasterous financial investment for most operators.
Just GOOGLE self serve yogurt in south florida. You will be shocked at how many different barnds have already opened.
Going to be a big fall soon enough.
For a guy that doesnt like yogurt you sure do eat at a lot of yogurt places. And you really have something against blockbuster, this is the second time youre bringing them up. You seem to be calling blockbuster a fad, but for a fad they sure did have a pretty good run and a lot of people made a lot of money off that fad!
Ya: Just had a chance to read your post.
Just so you know, Jeff Eats “tries” many joints that I really wouldn’t frequent if this site wasn’t being written. A number of readers asked me to follow some of self-serve yogurt businesses in Miami and elsewhere, so that’s why you saw and will see a number of reviews on this type of food.
As for your Blockbuster comment, Jeff Eats couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Blockbuster’s success or failure. The only reason the company was mentioned was to show that a fractured business (mom & pop stores) eventually was consolidated into one key player and even that player failed.
By the way, home-video wasn’t a fad. The only reason self-serve and video were compared, was to show how mom & pop guys get into a business. What Jeff Eats sees, is way too many small players getting in and an oversaturation of a market just around the corner.
As for self serve yogurt. Let’s talk 2-3 years from now and let’s see how well all of these new players are feeling about their businesses. My money says it’s going to be real ugly.
Thanks for reading…
i agree there are way too many of them now but i think just like anything else eventually they will begin to fall and only the strong ones in the strong shopping centers will survive. people percieve yogurt to be healthier than ice cream, even though they dont realize by the time they fill up their cup all the way they have about equivalent of 3 coldstones in their yogurt cup.
personally i enjoy going to these places after dinner for a lighter desert as do many people so over the next year or so we’ll probably see many more spring up all over the place and then in the end only the strong brands in strong locations will survive, or at least until somethng better comes along….
i’m sticking with jeff, going to be a major bloodbath when these places start to fail.
how come so many self serve yogurt reviews?