Meet the entrepreneur behind @fraiche, yogurt/cookie/coffee shop to Silicon Valley's techies

Okay, good.

So who are you?

I'm Fatama Roach, the owner of Fresh Yogurt in downtown Palo Alto.

And it's the best yogurt in town.

It definitely is, from my opinion. Yeah, we make yogurt here.

Every time I'm here, I meet an entrepreneur or a VC or some famous executive or an engineer in the Valley.

Yeah, I think that's just a consequence of being where we're located, which is a little bit off the beaten path on a side street in downtown. So you kind of have to know where we are to find us.

This is a famous street for starting businesses. The first Gordon Beersch started right next door.

Yeah. Yeah. We were pretty psyched when we signed this lease because, you know, we're fans of Gordon Beersch, and we're hoping a little bit of their magic would rub off on us.

And the first bar camp was in that building down back there.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. Which has started hundreds of bar camps around the world, which is a lot of fun.

Oh, great. Yeah.

What was the creative energy that got you to start something crazy like this?

Well, I think I've always been pretty entrepreneurial. I was just excited to start something, and this is the best place to start it. I feel like, you know, as opposed to other places in the country, people can really appreciate an honest effort, and there's a huge support network here, just in terms of. I feel like everyone has a second or third job or are willing to do things on the side. And, you know, as being a total foodie myself, I saw this gap in the market where I just felt like people didn't have to make that compromise between delicious and healthy. So, you know, we just started with yogurt and wanted to see where that took us.

What's the differentiator for you? What makes fresh different?

Yeah, a lot of people actually don't know that. A lot of people are just talking about fresh and whether our yogurt is tart or tart enough, as opposed to other froyos out there. But we actually do everything from scratch. So the innovation behind our concept is really this mini pasteurizing plant where we make our yogurts from sight. So we got our equipment in Europe, and we like the way the Europeans do it, which is usually just small, local, and very simple. So, yeah, so we make our yogurts from scratch first by pasteurizing our yogurts. So I'm a licensed pasteurizer, and we do all.

How long did that take to get?

I know. Yeah. It took a Good amount of studying. But the longest part of our concept development was around the bacteria. So we actually have a lab in the back and a clean room. And it's really an amazing experience growing bacteria, you know, because it's hard to pin a bacteria down, it grows at different rates. And yogurt's a live product, so it's constantly changing. So you'll come into our yogurt store and our yogurt will taste different almost every day. But that's the fun of it. Yeah.

Can you give me a sense of the capital needed to start a business like this?

Yeah, well, as a new entrepreneur, it was a lot of capital. I'm learning as I go. But we definitely had to build a full scale industrial plant and then a storefront.

So a few hundred thousand dollars.

I would say more than that. Yeah, quite a few.

What was the first customer? What was that experience like? And how did they find, did they just walk by one day?

Yeah, you know, it was interesting. I don't really believe in grand openings. We just kind of opened our doors and this is a very sleepy side street. There's not much open before noon because there's a bunch of restaurants. So we open our doors at 7am the first morning and, you know, a few gym goers across the street straggled in some coffee, but no one really knew what we were. So, yeah, the first customers were probably some of the gym goers right around here.

Obviously now you're well known. A lot of people in the Valley know you. I mean, I've heard that Steve Jobs come here and all that fun stuff. I don't know if you want to confirm that or not.

Yeah, you know, we get a lot of people here that.

But there's always a line now. So what was the secret from getting from that early days when nobody was coming in to where there's lines, you know, waiting for your product?

Yeah, I think, you know, we actually, you know, we didn't do a ton of marketing. We just served a good, honest, authentic product. And we just hope that word of mouth would get us going in terms of how delicious it was. You know, hopefully the food speaks for itself. Yeah, yeah.

Now, how are you using social media to get the word out?

You know, it's really fun being in this area because we get approached and we're learning a lot of things, probably on the cutting edge. We've tried a couple different things. You know, social media, especially through Yelp, you can't really ignore Yelp these days. So I definitely read our reviews on Yelp. And then, you know, we tried something called Foursquare. Yeah, Foursquare. And we tried a Foursquare promotion, but I'm not sure that we quite understood how to use it. We have a mayor, and we were offering the mayor a free topping. But I'd love to use Foursquare or other social media outlets to really get to know, like, our best customers and get them excited and probably facilitate word of mouth. Like if you want to bring in a friend, then there would be some sort of reward or recognition or something. But we haven't quite figured out social media, to be honest.

Now, I heard you played a part in the start of a new company, which I'm going to hear from their point of view how it started. But Blippi, which is a service where you put your credit card into.

Yeah, yeah. Coincidentally, my husband had a hand in Blippi, and we sit around and talk about Fresh. It's kind of like a little lab for all the problems that I have and what solutions might be. And, you know, one of the big problems I was having was I was like, I don't really know who our best customers are. I can physically sit in the store and see who comes in frequently. And I know there's frequent buyer cards, but I'd love for a venue to or a vehicle for me to really understand how often they're coming in, what exactly it is that they're getting. And so, like, looking at credit card statements was really interesting to me.

How many people do you have customers now using Blippi, and are you actually.

Using it to study their credit cards a little bit? You know, I think the type of information we want isn't quite disclosed because I think right now it's just the dollar value where I really would like the further details. What toppings are you using? Or, you know, are you getting our raw juice or do you like our chocolate chip cookies? But right now I think it's just the dollar value. But there is some color commentary around, you know, people asking other people what they're purchasing or who they're with when they're at Blippi. When they're on Blippi. Yeah.

So when I first learned about you, you were only a Y shop.

You still are a yogurt shop.

Well, yeah, but you make some other things. So do you feel like you get typecast sometimes and does it make it hard to innovate and come up with new products? Tell me about some of the other things you've added since starting the store.

I'm really glad that you asked because, you know, the Froyo thing is getting a little out of control. I think there's six frozen yogurt stores that have opened up within a mile of our original location. And, you know, my hope for Fresh is that it's much more than froyo. We obviously serve non frozen yogurt, and we go through the efforts of doing yogurt from scratch and pasteurizing and really looking into our healthy bacteria. But, you know, my ideal vision for Fresh is a place where people can get really delicious things that are healthy, like that intersection. So.

Well, you have a few things that aren't so healthy, but they are like chocolate chip cookies.

Yeah. Our definition of healthy isn't like, you know, fat free, sugar free. Our definition of healthy is good portions and real ingredients that are unprocessed. So, you know, someone gets our really indulgent, like, chocolate chip cookies, I hope that they get a glass of organic milk with it, you know, But I definitely. I'm not a strict person in terms of a diet. I don't believe that you should be. I mean, we'll have indulgent things, but also healthy things, too.

So how do you deal with all that new competition that you have? Six competitors now?

Six. Two more just. Well, one just opened this past month.

See, you're a trencher.

Another one is opening probably this spring, so.

Wow.

Yeah.

So how do you deal with all that new competition?

I don't know. We just try to focus on what works.

It seems like you're still doing pretty well. It's not competition.

Well, I think that's our challenge to differentiate. And like I said, there's so much more to Fresh than just Froyo. You know, it's a significant part of our business. But, you know, hopefully there's different layers that people discover, and we'll continue to innovate around products and around really healthy but craveable foods.

And now you've opened more than one location, right?

Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

Tell me about that.

We're on the Stanford campus. You know, Stanford has always been a big part of our fresh community, and we're happy to be there and service the students.

They're about a mile. Half a mile away.

Yeah, half a mile away. We just have a little kiosk there, the student union. And then we're also on Fillmore, which is a great neighborhood in San Francisco. In San Francisco? Yeah. In Lower Pack Heights.

What are you learning about doing multiple restaurants? Because that's different than just having one, right?

Yeah. Management hassle yeah. Well, one person can't run one. I mean, I think through sheer, like kind of muscling through it. You can be at the store all the time if you have one, but you definitely can't do that if you have three and, you know, locations that are pretty far apart. So I think this is where things get really interesting when I really get to learn about running the business and, you know, standardizing my ops and getting to know each customer in each different location as well as we can and catering to the community. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm still learning and it's been quite a ride.

Now you're a co founder, Right. So tell me how that happened. How did you meet your co founder?

Yeah, well, my co founder and I met a long time ago. We were analysts in the same banking class in New York. So we coincidentally both moved out to California within the same year and started brainstorming ideas and really just thought about ideas that incorporated all of our passions, which are food, wine, travel, you know, anything you could dream of if you were going to create your own job. So, yeah, Jessica and I are no longer with us. We actually went through an interesting period this summer. So she's left the business and is still a great friend and I'm glad it worked out for the better. Yeah.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Anything else that we should know about you, about me or about the covenant? About what I'm trying to do?

I'm fresh. Well, we just want to stay like a local company that just serves real food, you know. Not sure that we're planning to grow so much more just because we like to do everything by hand. But I hope that people who've been, who really know us will come back and discover the new things that we have.

Very cool. Well, thanks. And by the way, where do we.

Find you on the web www.freshyogurt.com and.

You'Re on Twitter too, at twitter.com fresh yeah. Thank you.

Thanks.