Dallas frozen yogurt meltdown: I Heart Yogurt at Inwood Village in Dallas

by Teresa Gubbins

Opened: May 2009

Profile: Medium-sized self-serve place in Inwood Village is part of a chain that launched in Newport Beach, Calif. The first local branch opened at Preston and Royal in fall 2008. Another branch is skedded to open across from SMU in two weeks, with subsequent targeted locations in Uptown Dallas, Allen, and Highland Village.

Ambiance: Overall color scheme was beige, with green lucite chairs, pink tabletops, and white plastic stools. The distinctive decorative element was the flooring: They use Pebble Tec, which looks like thousands of tiny little pebbles embedded together. It's the kind of thing you might see on a swimming pool deck or courtyard. But in this context, the telltale place where it's been used is at some Pinkberry stores. Is there nothing original in the world of frozen yogurt?

Alas, when I started taking a photo of the floor, an employee came out and harshly confronted me. "You can't take pictures -- the owners don't want anyone taking pictures," she said. "If you want to take it up with someone, you can visit the website." Which, surprise, was not a user-friendly place to visit. The store also lists no local phone number, only the regional manager's long-distance cellphone headquarters.

It's their business, and I'm grateful that other frozen-yogurt places haven't censored. But the no-photos policy (which, by the way, Central Market also harshly enforces) is similar to business owners who don't want to reveal their identities. It's certainly their right, but when a company that deals with the public gets freaky-secretive or restrictive, it sticks out.

Utensils: One size paper cup, and it's extra-large. This report claims that the spoons are made from biodegradable potato starch but that was back in December; perhaps they've changed it out, because those green things they served today were regular old plastic.

Price: 40 cents per ounce.

Yogurt: Five machines, 10 flavors. The same mainstream flavors such as strawberries and cookies & cream you see at all the places with this setup/supplier, as well as green tea, acai berry, regular "tart," and "original Italian." This store had espresso, which not everyone puts in regular rotation. But it had an off taste; that may have been because all of the flavors were at different degrees of firmness, so some melted before others, and affected their flavors.

Verdict: Draw. Typical self-serve place but not-so-friendly vibe.

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