Yogurt Lab =

Organic Yogurt + Milk (-Hormones) x (A+) Ingredients / Choice

It’s called a lab because we’re scientists of deliciousness. Every flavor of frozen yogurt is made fresh daily, right in our Labs. Yogurt Lab serves only premium USDA certified organic yogurt made with hormone-free milk. Pair that with our amazing collection of fresh, wholesome, and natural ingredients, and you're guaranteed to discover the perfect equation for your palate. In fact, did you know you have over 10,000 taste buds? It’s true! With 16 rotating flavors on tap and an ever-growing array of toppings to choose from, you have the power to experiment however you please.

How it Started

Founders = Local Family x (Froyo fanatics + community love)

Yogurt Lab was founded on an elementary, yet powerful mission: to provide people everywhere with the perfect equation of flavor, quality ingredients, and fun. And these three elements have been in the Yogurt Lab DNA since day one, when the first Lab opened in Minneapolis in 2011 by a local, homegrown family. Today, there are eight Lab locations with plans to expand out of state in 2013 and nationwide by 2014.

A Place for Everyone

Serious research happens here. We’ve already discovered the cure for the common froyo.

Dairy Free? Gluten Free? No sugar added? No problem. It’s as easy as Pi. All of our Labs offer frozen yogurt options YOUR way, no matter your dietary needs. In fact, you won’t find a molecule of high fructose corn syrup or a lick of other nasty, toxic stuff in our Labs. Every day we feature a variety of low-fat, non-fat, and non-sugar added flavors.
Yogurt Labs
  • No Sugar Added
  • Dairy Free
  • Contains Gluten
  • Contains Nuts
  • Non Fat
  • Low Fat

Under the Microscope

A closer look at Yogurt Labs’ ingredients

Yogurt Lab is committed to quality ingredients and transparency with our customers. And our customers are great. One of the most common questions we’re asked is about a list of ingredients used in our yogurts. Sounds simple, right? But in reality, it’s quite a challenge to answer, especially in a consumer-facing business associated with food.

Here’s the truth: We rely on multiple suppliers and distributors to help us create each of our unique products. And if you didn’t already know, Yogurt Lab creates and mixes each of our amazing yogurts fresh in the store (daily), rather than using a generically processed and/or frozen product, which sadly is the industry standard at other frozen yogurt shops. We then take those products – each of which are made up of multiple ingredients – and blend them to make our frozen yogurts. But you’re thinking, this still seems pretty simple, right?

Let’s examine an elementary example. To make our Red Orange flavor, we combine a series of ingredient inputs that results in the following output:

Ingredients: Sugar, dextrose, dehydrated glucose syrup, citric acid, orange juice, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids,locust bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, natural and artificial flavors, soy proteins, certified color: E120 carmine, E160a beta-carotene.

When you add that equation together, the result is a complicated ingredient list that none of us want to read through. But for now, it’s the best we can do. If you’re wondering how big companies can list just five or so ingredients, here’s your answer: They pay a food scientist to classify multiple types of ingredients (pure cane sugar, dextrose [or dry glucose] and maltodextrines) into broad buckets and simply label it “sugar,” for instance.

Yogurt Lab could pay a food scientist a big chunk of money to do the same, but that’s if we used a contract manufacturer to blend our product offsite, certify it, dehydrate and/or freeze it, and then redistribute it. This is astronomically expensive and presents several problems in and of itself. For example, we would be forced to continue using the same formulas forever (or at least until we wanted to pay a lot of money to re-certify it) and we would lose our unique ability to continually enhance it. Additionally, we would have less flexibility in creating new flavors and would no longer be able to offer a freshly blended product – something we’re just not willing to compromise.

We hope that you now better understand our business challenges and ingredients. And with that, we want you to know that Yogurt Lab is relentlessly trying new, better, cleaner formulas for our flavors and products. We demand and need the flexibility to improve our formulas because we believe it can always be better than where it is today. Thank you Yogurt Lab customers for being amazing, loyal, and 100% awesome.

– Andrea & Aaron, Founders of Yogurt Lab