™Gen Z Is Lining Up Past a Security Guard for $20 Frozen Yogurt
Go Greek charges $1.35 an ounce plus 75 cents a topping, and the protein-chasing crowd keeps coming back anyway.
At 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, a security guard was working the door at a Beverly Hills yogurt shop. Inside Go Greek, the line wrapped around the room, and the young crowd spilled out onto the patio to trade bites, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Frozen yogurt is back, and in L.A. the kind pulling the lines is frozen Greek yogurt, sold on protein instead of the low-fat promise behind earlier booms. It isn't cheap. Go Greek charges $1.35 an ounce, so a pound of yogurt costs $21.60 before a single blueberry goes on top.
Toppings are 75 cents apiece, and the premium ones are $1.29, according to the Times. On Sept. 29, the Beverly Hills shop's Uber Eats page listed a 16-ounce cup of plain at $20.90 and a 24-ounce at $34.20. "I think it's really expensive for yogurt," Riley Easton, on a second visit, told the Times.
The crowd pays anyway. Since 2020, a stretch when self-serve froyo had nearly vanished, each Go Greek shop has grown 20% to 30% a year, according to sales figures the company gave the Times. The chain started in Beverly Hills in 2012 and now has 30 shops in the U.S. and the Middle East.
Josh Kuck, 35, has been a regular with his partner for a few years and says he can't get a table anymore. "We used to go out on the weekends, but now it's like Gen Z is going to Go Greek," he told the Times. On Friday nights, he sees the line run out the door, full of people dressed to go out and sometimes dancing.
L.A. has done this before. Pinkberry and Menchie's both started here in the early 2000s and spread across the country, back when froyo's selling point was what it left out: fat and calories. This time the selling point is what's in the cup.
That's protein. The Times links the trend to proteinmaxxing and to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which about 10% of American adults are taking, according to a Gallup poll it cited. People on those drugs need protein to hold on to muscle while eating much less. Straining Greek yogurt roughly doubles its protein compared with regular yogurt and cuts its sugar.
Brandon, 34, a regular who works out and tracks what he eats, called it "a great way of getting a sweet treat without feeling guilty about it" in an interview with the Times. At more than $20 a cup, the only guilt left is on the receipt.
And the price hasn't stayed local. When Go Greek opened its first New York shop in NoHo in April, it charged the same $1.35 an ounce there, Time Out New York reported, with classic yogurt bowls starting at $10.99.
Back home, newer shops are moving in. Since August, Frankie Greek Yogurt has been popping up on weekends at Olive and James, a Melrose Avenue coffee shop, with one plain tart flavor and plenty of toppings. Nudes has its grand opening Thursday at 165 S. Crescent Heights Blvd. in Beverly Grove. WhatNow reported it's opening with four flavors, including pomegranate, and a featured plain tart cup crowned with pistachio, halva, honey and olive oil.
Co-owner Sasha Solonin told the Times he and his partner, Jason Afriat, used froyo shops as their late-night hangout long before they opened one. "When [coffee shops] would close, we would somehow always end up at a frozen yogurt shop," he said.
Source: Los Angeles Times, retrieved October 8, 2026. Other sources: ubereats.com, timeout.com, whatnow.com.
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