For Frozen Yogurt Franchise, Fundraising Draws Foot Traffic

Richboro’s popular frozen yogurt stop, , opens its second location in New Britain today at 11:30am. A third location will open its doors in Southampton in early September.

Husband and wife team, Josh and Nicole Hoffman, opened Go Bananas in December 2011. The Hoffman’s do much more than offer a rotation of 12 soft serve frozen yogurt flavors and almost 75 toppings, though. They have taken a very active role in the community through fundraisers, birthday parties and other events like youth group and senior nights.

Josh said it was a little difficult getting started, but the fundraising events helped a great deal.

“The biggest thing for us was getting involved with the schools,” he said. “And then once the schools knew, I mean think about how many kids are in each and the families and they spread the word.”

One way to fundraise with Go Bananas is to pre-purchase discounted gift certificates to sell. Organizations can also host fundraising events there. A percentage of the total sales at the event will go back as a donation to the organization.

“I think that helped us get the word out,” he said. “And we were able to do some fundraising up front with those schools. And it benefitted us by getting the word out and bringing a lot of people in. And then they were happy because they got a percentage from them.”

This tasty treat is much less sinful than the average ice cream sundae. Besides being low or non-fat, frozen yogurt has low calories, sodium and cholesterol. It also has probiotics, beneficial bacteria. In general, the Hoffman’s keep one non-dairy sorbet and one no-sugar-added flavor among the ten other varieties. Josh said you can always find chocolate and vanilla as well as cake batter, cookies and cream and peanut butter.

The flavor rotation does not happen on a designated schedule. Some flavors are subject to seasons while others appear, or disappear, due to level of demand.

“It’s more like either when the flavor is becoming less popular or when we’re hearing a request for a flavor a lot or when a new flavor’s available,” Josh said. “The toppings, we have almost 75 toppings now. As people request things, we add them.”

Customers are vocal about what they like and what they want available. Go Bananas now offers pistachio and chocolate chip cookie frozen yogurt and Nerds candy topping.

“It’s mostly what we hear from people, as well as Facebook,” he said. “They definitely say which flavors they want or new toppings that they want.”

Overall, the couple hopes to continue its family-oriented atmosphere at each location.

“We just try to make it as nice as possible,” Josh said. “I think it’s a nice place for kids to hang out, [and] whole families with kids.”