SwirlFrutti Open for Business, Hopes to Share East Asian Culture

BROOMALL–SwirlFrutti officially opened its doors to the public on Tuesday. The frozen yogurt shop is a welcomed addition to the once empty storefront at 2510 West Chester Pike in Broomall.

The frozen yogurt shop is set up in the same building as the –a non-profit organization established in 2009 that promotes the development of  physical, mental and spiritual health as well as specializing in Asian culinary, floral and healing arts. It also offers yoga, meditation and more.

The school opened about three years ago at a location in the Lawrence Park Shopping Center and moved to the West Chester Pike location last June. The school is in the process of changing its name from Seidokai School of Wholistic Education to Soza School of Wholistic Education.

Owner of SwirlFrutti Marvin Lee, of Swarthmore, also sits on the Board of Directors at the Asian holistic school. Lee said the idea of setting up a frozen yogurt shop was purely to help benefit the school.

"A majority of the funds will go towards the school," said Lee.

A Need for FroYo

Seeing that a space was available right next to the school and a need for frozen yogurt in the suburbs, Lee and a few colleagues set out to research on frozen yogurt shops.

"We did some research on the kinds of business models," said Lee. "Most of us are from East Asia like Japan and South Korea and were familiar with frozen yogurt stores (since most popular frozen yogurt shops are from South Korea), so we knew some background already."

According to Lee, he visited a countless number of frozen yogurt shops in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles. Though many appeared to have different quirks about them, one thing they all appeared to have in common was their sleek, trendy, futuristic store designs.

East Meets West

Lee said he wanted to incorporate traditional East Asian design into the store such as clean lines and wooden finishes.

"I wanted a modern East Asian look–taking that traditional Asian clean look and changing that a little. I wanted to provide a cultural taste of East Asian design," explained Lee.

In addition to the look and feel of the store, the shop will also sell cookies and snacks from East Asia such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

"We wanted to have different kinds of cookies here that most people don't have," said Lee.

What's On the Menu

In addition to the cookies and snacks, the shop will also offer fresh fruit juices and smoothies year-round. Lee said this was mainly for people who didn't want a frozen treat in the winter.

But the big draw of the place will be for, of course, frozen yogurt. Customers will be able to choose from four–soon to be six–different frozen yogurt flavors and choose from 32 different toppings. The frozen treat is weighed by ounce for $0.49 per ounce.

The current flavors being offered are: red velvet cupcake, birthday cake, Valencia orange, and California tart. Lee said the flavors will be changed almost bi-weekly with new flavors.

The store is open Monday through Saturday from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on Sundays from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.