Building a Frozen Yogurt Empire: How Menchie's Sold Experience, Not Just Dessert | Dana Balas

In a crowded market, Menchie's founder Danna Balas spotted what most founders miss: people don't just want a product, they want an experience. The story of how she turned self-serve frozen yogurt into a global brand — and the lesson any entrepreneur can borrow. 

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Transcript

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 0:00

So there was this new wave of frozen

Scale Now?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 0:02

yogurt, and we knew that we either scaled quickly or someone else was gonna take the idea and scale. So it's a race.

How Menchie's Built One Store and Then Scaled

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 0:15

Every entrepreneur has a nightmare. Your idea works, which means someone else just had that idea too. Dana Ballas got there first with Menchie's frozen yogurt. And then she did the only sensible thing to do. She ran fast, she built fast, she expanded fast. Today, the founder of Menchi's Build Your Own Fro Yo Experience has become a global franchise sensation. And Donna's gonna share all the details of what it genuinely takes to build something that customers love and keep coming back for. And she shares how her Israeli background and upbringing help turn one store into a worldwide brand. I'm your host, Jennifer Weisman. Welcome to the Israeli Trailblazer Show. Hello, Donna. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you so much for having me on today. You've built an empire. You've got hundreds of froyo stores around the world. Yes, we are at about 350 right now and growing in a variety of countries

350 Stores and Growing

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 1:23

as well. Donna, you're Israeli. How has that influenced or contributed to how you started Menchis?

How Danna's Israeli Background Helped Scale Menchie's

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 1:30

Coming from an Israeli background, everyone has had to be the creator and figure out how to make things happen. Many of us have heard the stories how our grandparents came to Israel, how our parents started in Israel, and there was nothing there. So you have to create whatever it is that you need, you want. And there's this sense of making things happen. I think that's very much

What is the Israeli Mindset?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 1:50

part of the Israeli mindset of you want something, you create it, you get it done, you figure it out. You can't count on someone else to come up with it or make it happen or figure it out for you.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 2:01

This mindset that Israelis had, is that what helped you scale one small yogurt shop into this large froyo empire?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 2:12

I didn't originally have the idea of scaling it. Our customers

How The Customer's Pushed to Scale Menchie's

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 2:16

came in and the amazing instant reaction they had gave me the oomph to be like, okay, well, we got to scale and we got to scale now. Because at the time that the first Menchis opened, Pinkberry was super popular. You had to figure out how to do it fast. A lot of other brands were doing something that was very different than what Menchies thought out to do, which is the creator of

Menchie's Secret Sauce!

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 2:40

your own perfect frozen yogurt dessert, which is where my sweet tooth came into coming up with the idea because I love frozen yogurt. I love sweets, I've always had a sweet tooth, but I didn't want to commit to one flavor or one topping or one swirl. What does Menchis mean? So when

What does Menchie's Mean?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 2:59

I met my ex-husband, I was working at a local synagogue in Los Angeles. And he met me and he's like, Oh, look at all these things you're doing. You're such a mensch. And I'm like, don't call me a mensch. A mensch is a guy. I'm not a guy. And he goes, fine, then you're Menschie. And so as we were dating, Menshe was my nickname. And when we started coming up with the business plan and how we were going to move this forward, we were like, what do we come up with? We don't want to call it yogurt. Stop. And he's like, You're the one with the sweet tooth. We should call it menschies.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 3:30

Menschie for the rest of the world who is listening means what?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 3:33

So a mensch is a is Yiddish, also German, but like for a good person, a good upstanding, the kind of person people want to be.

HOST 3:41

Good soul in the world. Yeah. Even the name of your business is rooted in Judaism.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 3:47

Is also rooted in a

Menchie's Rooted in Connection to Israel

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 3:49

connection to Israel. We've opened stores in some very interesting places, including in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. When we first talked about those franchisees being interested, I would say, Abiat, aren't you worried? It's called Menchis. And he goes, We're bringing smiles to the world. We're bringing peace to the Middle East one smile at a time. There's something about frozen yogurt, about treats, about having an experience with your friends, your family,

Why Having a Fun Experience Changes Political Dynamic's.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 4:14

whatever, that disarms. It's not about politics, it's not about Judaism. It's not about any of that. It's about the fun, the character, the feel. A testament to that is that people in these countries were happy to bring Menschis to these countries with the name and the logo standing as is.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 4:35

Enjoying the show? Please take five seconds and tap a five-star review wherever you're listening to this show.

Please Give a 5* REVIEW Now

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 4:43

It helps more people find this podcast and grow the Israeli Trailblazers community. What aspects really felt good to you about going fast and scaling Menchis? Because your company's not that old.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 4:59

Well, we just celebrated 18 years since the open of the first store. When I first started working on the look and feel of the store, I was very interested in making it something that was more

How Menchie's Developed a Special Brand Style Customers Loved.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 5:12

unique. The logo, the colors, the look, the feel, more than just your mom and pop shop or your neighborhood store that felt good to come in. We got to a point where we were scaling so fast. It felt really good because it felt like, hey, we did this in this way. This did connect with people in the way that I wanted to and was hoping to. And so people want this. And it was exciting that people were like, can we open here? Can we open there? My very first business plan that I went to banks with and whatnot was, okay, we're going to open a family store. And maybe in 10 years we'll have five family stores. And franchising wasn't the initial idea when we first opened, it was the after effect of the response that we got.

How Danna Learned to Franchise.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 5:56

So yes, I wanted to grow and brand, but I didn't really know what franchising was when we opened the first store. This was a concept I had to learn. And so we had to learn franchising and expansion and all of it really fast at the same time. Having people react to the brand in the way that they did and wanting us to open in their area and wanting to open their own store so quickly was really powerful and really gave me like the, hey, we've got something here. And there were two early moments that really struck me. One of them was that within five weeks of opening, I got the first call that someone said, Hey, are you guys a franchise and how do I franchise? And I was like, What? And I was like, let me get back to you. The fact that within five weeks of opening the first store, that people were, you know, was just to me amazing. And then the other really cool thing that happened

Paris Hilton Filmed At the Store & How that Helped Menchie's

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 6:47

pretty quickly, which is also part of being in Los Angeles, a production company for Harris Hilton's, I think it was called The Simple Life, when she was on like a farm show or something. The production company asked if they could come and film in the store. And I was like, sure. Okay. You know, this is before we ever thought, like, oh, would they be fees or whatever? I was just so excited that we were getting noticed, right? And this was early on. This was the first summer that we were open, maybe two months after opening. And when the production company came in, they're like, okay, we're gonna go through the store and we're gonna tape everything that doesn't have your logo. We don't have permission. And they're walking through the store and she comes out after, she goes, I don't know that I've ever seen this before. I have nothing to cover in your store other than the Visa and MasterCard logo on the way in. And I was like, that's so cool. So these moments of like, hey, people want a franchise. And look, we're so well branded. And so from the first store, if you look at the first store's design, logo, feel, layout, yes, we've had some updates. We've used some materials that last a little longer. But for the most part, the first store that opened looks like the stores that opened today. And that to me is incredibly powerful and incredibly exciting to see that what I created with that first store was so much more than a froyo store. My son yesterday, uh, who's 13, was asking me about someone, and I said, Oh, they're really, really famous. And he goes, Mom, you're famous. And I'm like, I'm not famous. He goes, You started Menchis. You're famous.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 8:20

I gotta love that kid. You built a froyo empire based on some chutzpah. Why do you think that essence of Judaism is really misunderstood or lost with much of the world?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 8:32

There's two reasons.

How did Danna's Israeli Root Contribute to Her Success?

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 8:34

I think one of them is that people don't understand. I can't think of another religion that is an ethno religion that has this so much more like you can be Jewish without being a practicing Jew. And that's not really clearly understood by a lot of the Western world because you're either Christian or Protestant or whatever it is, or you're not. And you can be Jewish and not Jew-ish, I guess, because people call the Jewish one they know. And I think the other one is a lot of lost in translation. Michelangelo made Moses with horns because the translation a ray of

Translations Were Wrong & Created Misinformation for Jews.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 9:10

sun and a horn are the same word in Hebrew. So it was translated as horn instead of ray of sun. But I think the lost in translation is like if the Hebrew phrase says or la goim, and they're like, oh, you think you're a light unto other nations, and they're not translating the essence, they're translating the literal words. And that loses in translation. Like the chosen people, when you look and read the stories, it was like God went to this nation and they said no. God went to this nation and they said no, and God went to the Jews and they said no at first, and then they said, okay, you learn about the history of the Jews, especially in Europe. So, okay, people say that Jews are greedy or they're always dealing with money. Okay, they were kicked out of every other profession and forced to be the moneylenders and the tax collectors, and then they did what they were doing well. So now we don't like them. The Jews started Hollywood because they were kicked out of being doctors and lawyers and whatever, and then Hollywood takes off. And oh my God, the Jews took over Hollywood. They don't want to learn the history. People don't want to understand

Why People Must Learn History

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 10:08

what gets people to where they are and how they got there. We have lost our way with educating our Jewish youth and our non-Jewish youth. And that is a huge part of the problem that we have today. Because there's a lot of even diaspora Jews that don't know anything about how and why we are where we are and the situation, and are even fighting against their own people because they don't understand their history and their roots. And to me, this is a bigger problem in the Jewish community that we messed up. We messed up educating our

We Did Not Properly Educate Our Kids.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 10:43

children because if we had given them the education to understand how the Jews got to where they are today and what was behind that, we wouldn't have as many problems as we do today.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 10:55

This clickbait misinformation world that we're living in has become very dangerous.

Guest, Dana Balas Founder of Menchie's 11:01

It's very hard to fight disinformation.

Host, Jennifer Weissmann 11:05

From one frozen yogurt store to a global franchise sensation, Donna Balas showed us that Israeli chutzpah, determination, and a great customer-based idea wins. Please subscribe and leave a five star review if this episode resonated with you. I'm Jennifer Weissman. Until next time.