A fter enjoying frozen yogurt on trips to Southern California and Arizona, Susan Bridges thought the treat might go over well in Maple Valley.
For a while, however, her husband, Dan, resisted, arguing that it’s just too cold around here.
“It started moving to the Northwest, and I finally got him on board,” Bridges says.
Now Bridges is putting the finishing touches on Maple Valley’s first frozen yogurt shop, Yum-e Yogurt. The shop, located in the Safeway shopping center at Four Corners, next to the Animal Hospital of Maple Valley, is scheduled to open on Friday, March 30.
We wanted to create more of a hangout
Bridges has lived in Maple Valley for more than 30 years with seven kids going through the Tahoma School District.
“We really wanted to do it Maple Valley because this is our community,” Bridges says.
That connection to the community has inspired the shop’s design, which is meant to feel warmer and more inviting for long visits than the typical ice cream shop might feel. The shop, which will offer WiFi, features wood floors and a fireplace. In good weather, customers can sit at tables on the front sidewalk.
“We wanted to create more of a hangout,” she says.
With two mounted TVs, Bridges hopes to offer family movie nights or toddler movies during the day. “Of course, whenever the Huskies are playing, the Huskies will be on,” she says.
The shop has already signed up to sponsor local soccer teams, and the indoor seating arrangement — with one very long bench along one wall — is designed to allow a team to sit together after a game, she says.
Yum-e Yogurt will feature the Portland-based YoCream brand of frozen yogurt, and the store will offer about 50 toppings, many of them fresh fruit, she says.
Bridges worked in the grocery business — including cashiering for the Maple Valley Safeway when it opened in the 1980s — for 18 years. In recent years, she has worked in finance.
To open Yum-e Yogurt, Bridges says, she “finally got out from behind the desk.”
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[...] read more about both of these shops, click this story on Yum-e Yogurt or this one about Gino’s [...]