Pinkberry Looks Abroad to Keep Its Cool

When Pinkberry opened its first store in 2005 among the glitterati of West Hollywood, Chief Executive Officer Ron Graves recalls people lining up for hours to get their hands on the frosty yogurt dessert. (A small cup can cost up to $4.95.) The city issued $175,000 in parking tickets during a single month to Pinkberry customers, he says. Now a host of copycats has emerged just as the American frozen yogurt craze may be melting. Graves's solution? Expand the 119-store, Los Angeles-based Pinkberry chain overseas, with new shops scheduled to open this year in Britain, Turkey, Morocco, and the Philippines.

"Consumer brands have to look at the landscape through a global lens, as opposed to the domestic lens that Starbucks (SBUX) started from 40 years ago," says Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who joined the Pinkberry board in 2007. Currently, more than half of Pinkberry's shops are in Southern California or Manhattan. By yearend, however, about one-fourth of the chain's stores will be outside the U.S., says Graves. That's more than twice the proportion now.