New YogoLaada Has a Lotta Frozen Yogurt

As weather gets hotter and more humid this summer, Pikesville residents have a new place to get something that’s nice and cold.

YogoLaada Frozen Yogurt & Cereal Bar, a self-serve frozen yogurt shop, is now open in the Woodholme Square Shopping Center near .

So far, it offers 10 flavors of frozen yogurt, as well as cereal and fresh fruit toppings from which customers can choose. There are also gummies, candies and sauces.

And while there's no permanent sign or phone, and there's been no advertising, the store opened Friday without fanfare. Already there's been a steady stream of customers, said Nicole Chittavong, owner.

“I’m very impressed,” she said. “We can’t believe how well we did without any advertising. People are coming in constantly, so we’re very happy. We couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Chittavong and Ben Lipov, her husband, are the Owings Mills residents who own the store; a place where customers can come in and self-serve yogurt quickly and quietly.

In addition, customers can help themselves to the variety of food from the cereal bar—a salad-bar setup from which customers can choose their toppings.

The store is located at 1860 Reisterstown Road, at the intersection of Reisterstown Road and Mt. Wilson Lane. It will offer some other food items later on, Chittavong said.

YogoLaada, a name that implies "a lotta yogurt," is modeled after stores Lipov has seen throughout California, especially in the San Diego area. He was sold on the concept of people just coming in to get yogurt for themselves.

“Here we don’t have anything like that,” Chittavong said of the type of store. “We wanted to be different from everyone else by having a large selection of toppings; very, very healthy toppings.”

But the couple didn’t pursue opening the business until last year when Chittavong visited a similar business: in Annapolis.

She tasted their product, and she and Lipov decided to open the Pikesville store.

They have made sure that all of the yogurt is kosher, and that about 98 percent of the toppings are as well.

According to the YogoLaada Facebook page, "all flavors are non-fat/low-fat, gluten-free, probiotic enriched, and delicious."

YogoLaada will be adding more items, such as smoothies, in the coming weeks and months.     

The couple plans to use social media to get some help from their customers.

Chittavong said that while they’ll always keep a few staple flavors of frozen yogurt on hand, such as chocolate and vanilla, they’ll rotate other flavors—about four—each week, based on their customers' votes on the store's Facebook page.

The YogoLaada website launches soon, and will be another place where customers can vote on the flavors they prefer.

Correction: The original version of this story stated the incorrect number of flavors. We regreat the error.