This week we’ve got the skinny on Mickey’s Yogurt, an honest-to-goodness family-owned frozen yogurt shop in Clovis, California. Mickey and Daryl France are the owners. We spoke with Daryl about Mickey’s Yogurt and how custom t-shirts helped them before the doors even opened!
Tell us a little about Mickey’s Yogurt.
Mickey and I met on an Internet dating site over 4 years ago. When we met, Mickey shared his dream of one day owning a frozen yogurt business. I quickly climbed on board that yogurt train and we embarked on a quest to find a great location. As much as we looked, the right place just didn’t materialize. We live in Southern California and there are lots of frozen yogurts stores in the area.
Clovis, California seems like an interesting place. Why’d you choose Clovis?
My daughter lives in Clovis and a great location opened up and we grabbed it. Clovis is a town of about 100,000 people in the Central Valley area near Fresno. Mickey loves the cleanliness of the city and the way people take care of their homes. He says it shows that people really care about the town in which they live. We now live in Clovis part-time.
Mickey’s Yogurt truly is a family affair, isn’t it?
We rolled up our sleeves after securing a location and got to work. Mickey handled dealing with the construction, I created the design and colors for the store and advertising. My daughter, Melisa Howell, and her husband Paul Howell jumped in to help. Melisa handled the licenses and fees with the city, and Paul took care of anything technical, like wiring and utilities. Melisa is now the head manager of the store and Paul serves as the service manager. That’s where BlueCotton comes in! We knew we wanted a great design for the employee t-shirts. Our granddaughter Tiffany is an artist and student and created the t-shirt design. I sent her design over to my son Jared, who designs monsters for the film industry. He fine-tuned the design into the artwork seen on both our employee t-shirts and our promo-tees.
So you have employees t-shirts and promotional t-shirts, right?
Yes. In addition to the employees’ tees, we wanted to have a t-shirt to promote Mickey’s Yogurt. We planned to give out the tees on Opening Day. We ended up giving out tees to people applying for
jobs and people who were nice to us and before long all the t-shirts were gone. All 400 t-shirts! The tees helped generate a buzz around town. People started dropping by while we were painting and working on the store asking when Mickey’s Yogurt would be open! People keep asking if they can buy the promo t-shirts. One lady came in with her two young boys wearing their t-shirts. She told Mickey that they wear their shirts to school every day and she has to sneak them away to wash the shirts so they can keep wearing them.
So how was Opening Day?
The business opened with a bang on February 2nd of this year and has continued to do extremely well.
What are the most popular flavors of yogurt and toppings?
Favorite flavors are traditional vanilla and chocolate. Customers say they like those flavors best because they can be mixed with any topping. The most popular toppings are Reese’s Pieces, M & M’s, and Cookie Dough. For the fruit toppings, the Strawberries are a clear front-runner. Mickey’s favorite yogurt flavors are Pistachio, Root Beer Float, and Cherry Amaretto. I like the same flavors Tart threw in for good measure to have something a little less sweet.
Daryl with a local school’s mascot!