New Frozen Yogurt Joints Open Up to Cool You Down This Summer

Frozen yogurt has invaded Mattituck and Greenport.

Yogurt Expressions and FroYopia are two new self-serve frozen yogurt shops that opened last month. Each are run under separate independent ownership, providing each community an alternative to traditional ice cream.

Though established shops like in Mattituck have offered a few flavors of yogurt self-serve for customers over the years, there has not been a standalone shop dedicated to only frozen yogurt in the hamlet.

“I’ve always loved frozen yogurt and I wanted to open a place where families and kids feel comfortable,” said Susan Orioli, who owns Yogurt Expressions and with her family on the same property on Route 25 in Mattituck. “We’ve been researching this for about a year.”

Yogurt Expressions is open everyday from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Orioli’s young kids, Jimmy and Gianna, help out a staff of 14, made up of high school and college students, in a modern and brightly-lit store featuring several rotating frozen flavors — lowfat, nonfat and sugar-free — and 35 toppings available.

Like Yogurt Expressions, FroYopia is a privately owned (not a franchise) frozen yogurt shop that also opened in June in the former space on Front Street in Greenport. Owner Spyros Arokidis, a branch manager at the Riverhead Citibank, said that he became interested in frozen yogurt after several visits to the West Coast, where frozen yogurt has already given ice cream a run for its money.

“Front Street is a great location for yogurt,” said Arokidis, a Coram resident who went into the venture with business partner Louie Rumeliotis. “There are a ton of these types of stores opening up in Nassau County and we just wanted to be out on the East End.”

The number of self-serve frozen yogurt shops like these two on the North Fork climbed 31 percent between 2010 and 2011 in the U.S. — from 3,624 to 4,765, according to a recent article on The Huffington Post, and consumers continue to shift from ice cream to frozen yogurt.

Yogurt Expressions held a grand opening on June 23. FroYopia opened up with little fanfare, but either way, both business owners say the introduction of frozen yogurt to the North Fork has been going well.

“There has been a tremendous amount of community support,” Arokidis said. 

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