This City Is Ready for More Fro-Yo

Pistachio drizzles top artisanal swirls while chains plot a return to prominence. Is the next big yogurt boom here at last?

- BY RACHEL SUGAR

EVERY DAY ON the Upper East Side, lines snake outside the neighborhood's two Butterfield Markets. These crowds are particularly striking because of the diversity of age on display: There are old people. There are babies. There are couples, nannies, tourists, friends, and medical professionals. At 3 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, a pair of crop-topped grad students from California stood ahead of a taut, impatient middle-aged Australian in athleisure. “We don’t need the queue to be any longer than it is!” she'd interjected, nudging everyone along. They were all waiting for the same thing: Butterfield Market's house frozen yogurt, swirled into robin’s-egg-blue cups and, inevitably, posted to Instagram. “I think it’s pretty worth the hype,” said the more yogurt-savvy of the Californians.

She preferred it to the fro-yo from Madison Fare, three blocks uptown, where earlier that day a quintet of contoured Chicagoans had been eating frozen Greek yogurt bathed in Dubai-chocolate-inspired pistachio sauce. “We just saw it on TikTok!” said a 22-year-old named Amy. Fro-yo had been on their vacation itinerary: Central Park, Broadway, Madison Fare. Frozen yogurt is “definitely getting popular again,” she added, since “access to social media creates a way for people to market their random businesses and stuff.”

Madison Fare added its yogurt last summer. Chef Amin Kinana had wanted to drum up business when his regulars fled the city for the Hamptons. The response was immediate and overwhelming. “I was like, Okay, whatever, this is gonna die out soon, but it didn’t. It just keeps going and going,” he said. “This thing with yogurt is growing very big.”