Restaurant Owners Uncorked · 2026-07-17 · 58 min
Ari Ford, founder of Easy Breezy, joins the show to share how she built a premium frozen yogurt, custard, and vegan soft-serve brand across the San Francisco Bay Area. She's now at six stores with two more on the way after fourteen years in business. After fifteen years in tech (and two startups, one win and one loss), Ari made a hands-on career pivot and spent ten months studying roughly forty yogurt operators before opening her first shop. She walks through the philosophy that's driven slow, self-funded, profitable growth ever since: obsess over product quality, but win on the in-store experience and community. Along the way she digs into staffing and retention, real-estate discipline, why she never runs grand openings, how she handles rising costs and shifting consumer behavior, the tools that keep her operation humming, and her long game: proving the concept works regionally before ever considering a national rollout (and why she'll never franchise). Key Takeaways Experience beats product, barely. Ari tells her staff the business is 49% the product and 51% the in-store experience.
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