#1 Frozen Yogurt

People have been eating plain yogurt for over four millennia, particularly in the Middle East and India. Yogurt was brought to the U.S. in the early 1900s and steadily increased in popularity as a health food item over the next several decades. In the 1930s Dannon began selling prepackaged yogurt for the first time in the U.S. By the 1970s, with the popularity of ice cream surging, freezing and production technology was transferred to the production of frozen yogurt. Many consumers, however, complained about the yogurt taste. Capitalizing on consumer demand for a sweet product that tasted like ice cream but was healthier, TCBY opened its first store in 1981. Unlike previous pre-packaged versions introduced earlier, TCBY's yogurt was soft-serve dispensed at the point of sale through a machine. TCBY became the largest frozen yogurt franchise in the world at that time. As others saw the success of TCBY, frozen yogurt took off in the 1980s, reaching sales of $25 million in 1986. Brands such as Colombo, Nanci's, and Miss Karen's came to prominence around that time in the United States and frozen yogurt was 10% of the frozen dessert market accounting for over $300 million in sales by the mid 1990s.