Freeze Yogurt Bar is scheduled to open June 1 in downtown Auburn. The new store is located next to Big Blue Bagel and Deli in the location that used to be A Boho Boutique.
Christina and Lance Francis, a husband and wife team, created Freeze as an independent business in March 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are both Auburn alumni from the class of 1992.
“When the frozen yogurt world started, like that whole trend, we thought it was really kind of cool cause we would go with our kids and our friends out, and it just had a social kind of connectedness,” Christina Francis said. “So, we started looking into it, we looked at some franchises, but we decided, once we saw some of the stuff that goes into the yogurt, we decided it was something that we didn’t really want to pursue.”
The original Cincinnati store was self-serve, but the downtown Auburn location will be full service and have eight flavors available at a time.
“It used to be like a Chill, and now it will be like a TCBY,” Christina Francis said.
The Cincinnati location closed for six months in 2014 while the Francis family moved to Auburn. The family has been looking for a new location in Auburn since they moved to town, Christina Francis said.
“It was kind of surreal to me because I never thought I would be back living in Auburn and opening a shop on College,” Francis said. “Of all the places in Auburn, we’re actually excited to be downtown, I know a lot of people are looking to relocate from downtown, but for us, it’s more foot traffic.”
One of the main goals of Freeze is to provide a healthy product. The frozen yogurt Freeze will serve is all organic. There will even be a vegan option made with coconut milk available.
Available toppings include fruit and candy that are free of GMOs, artificial coloring and flavoring.
“When we started looking at all the toppings that go in it, we kind of felt bad doing really healthy, especially for kids,” Francis said.
Freeze will also have a variety of teas and water bottles available. All profits made from water sales will go to Charity Water, a non-profit that provides clean drinking water in Africa. Freeze is also partnering with Our House, a local non-profit after-school program.
Freeze will also have pints of frozen yogurt to-go for sale. The store will have two restrooms available to customers and a backdoor entrance only to be accessible for employees.
They have hired approximately 100 high school and college students to work at Freeze, Christina Francis said.
“We know it’s hard to go to school and work at the same time,” Francis said. “We do an online scheduling, an app, where everyone can go ahead and put their availability in, and then they get scheduled for when they want to work.”
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