Orange Leaf Blooms on North Main Street

Kristina Hathaway, and her husband Jeff, opened Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt, North Main Street’s latest food offering earlier this year, and business is going pretty well.

For the Hathaways, who live in Exeter, this is their first venture into a retail store. Kristina Hathaway runs a wedding publication and they have two young children, too. She said they decided to look for other business opportunities and while looking at franchise opportunities, went with Orange Leaf.

“We wanted to do something together, to own a business together, which led us to Orange Leaf,” she said. “We like the self-serve model and the experience that it gives our customers.”

Orange Leaf has more than 200 stores around the United States and Australia, including New Hampshire locations in Concord, Amherst, Epping, Exeter, and Portsmouth. Nine more locations are “coming spoon” to New Hampshire, according to the corporate franchise site.

Hathaway said family was important to the couple when starting a new business and with the children, frozen yogurt seemed like a good opportunity. The store offers 18 flavors for customers to choose from, either low fat or no fat, and any number of toppings, which will appeal to families with young children. One of the cool flavors at the store is root beer float that, she said, tasted just like a real root beer float from the old days.

The store is hosting open mic nights for performers on Mondays, to give the store a café feel, and invite others into the experience.

“We don’t just want to offer frozen yogurt, we want to be a community resource,” she said, adding that the store would be hosting fundraising events, art displays, and story times as well as the open mics.

Hathaway said this is the couple’s first location and they may open more shops in the future, although they are just catching their breath now.

“It was a lot to get this up and running,” she said, with a light laugh. “We’re going to see how this goes.”