Yo-Chi is coming to London. The Australian frozen yoghurt brand is more than a frozen yoghurt shop – Broadsheet in Australia dubbed it “Australia’s hottest club”, and as customers build their own fro-yo bowls under disco balls and neon signs, its stores blast Charli XCX and queues spill out the doors. London’s first Yo-Chi opens in Notting Hill later this summer, taking over a 2000-square-foot space that spans two floors with capacity for 120 people. It’ll have a DJ booth and a disco ball – and, of course, the brand’s self-serve yoghurt bars.
“We’d seen thousands of comments, messages and videos from Brits who’d discovered us in Australia or found us online, so we thought we’d better listen and head over,” co-owner and chief brand officer Oliver Allis said in a statement. Yo-Chi was founded in 2012, but taken over by Allis and his brother Riley Allis in 2020.
At the core of the Yo-Chi experience is its DIY fro-yo bowls. Customers can choose from nine frozen yoghurt flavours (made with cow’s milk) or acai, and swirl the yoghurt directly into their bowls themselves. They can then pile on more than 30 ingredients, ranging from fresh fruit like strawberries and blueberries to choc-chunk cookie cake, granola, mini mochi and a variety of sauces and spreads. Customers pay for their bowls by weight at the till. There are vegan and gluten-friendly options, and it caters to those who are dairy-free and nut-free.
In Australia – where the brand has more than 75 locations – many of the shops have bouncers on the doors on Friday and Saturday nights to wrangle queues. As younger customers switch out pints at pubs for gym sessions and protein, it’s become a key third space for them to hang out after dark. Allis says a key reason for its move to London is thanks to a wave of requests on social media.
“For those who haven’t tried Yo-Chi, it's hard to fathom just how much hype there is around a frozen yogurt shop but honestly, there’s no other place with a better product,” he says. “You could walk into a Yo-Chi on any given night and find a hundred people there, all completely different ages, all having a great time in the same room.”
Yo-Chi opens at 81–85 Notting Hill Gate, W11 3JS this summer.
