Putting Some Zip into Frozen Yogurt, Zinga Opens New Store

By Frank Klimko

As a young man headed for Wall Street, Dave Baer never imagined he would some day oversee a collection of frozen yogurt shops that deliver — not compound interest on your deposit, but a choice of 50 toppings on your frozen treat.

Baer opened the Zinga Frozen Yogurt shop in South Riding this past week with the grand opening set for Saturday. It is the fifth Zinga shop Baer and his group of investors have opened the past two-and-a-half years in Northern Virginia. They opened the first shop in Ashburn in 2011.

It has been an unlikely journey. At 21, Baer was working for a Herndon financial house with aspirations of landing a big job in New York City one day. But the day job wasn’t what he thought it would be.

“It turned out that I didn’t like my grown-up job,” Baer said. “I went back to my old job at Dominos and in a few months I was a manager, then supervisor.”

Baer rose rapidly through corporate ranks at Dominos, quitting just last year. The three touchstones of Dominos corporate management — product, service and image — are woven into the DNA at the shops he owns.

“We hire good people and really try to deliver them a good product,” Baer said. “After opening four stores previously, there were no real surprises with this store. Things just went pretty smoothly.”

South Riding was a natural place to expand for the franchise, he said.

“We really like this area, it’s very family friendly and we think we will do real well here,” said Baer, who grew up in the Greenbriar community in Western Fairfax County. “It’s just a great place.”

The centerpiece of the shop? Six massive and gleaming frozen yogurt machines that whip the specially made liquid yogurt into a light and gently smooth frozen concoction. Twelve different flavors will be offered daily. The liquid yogurt is shipped in from a dairy farm in the Midwest and the shop only uses fresh fruit, nothing canned or frozen, he said.

Customers were eagerly anticipating trying out the product. Many came into the store this week just to check things out before the machines started dispensing treats.

“We just can’t wait,” said Theresa Cheng, of South Riding, who came into the shop with her two girls, Maddy, 10, and Emma, 2. “The kids just love to fill up on the yogurt and of course they can’t finish it and mom and dad have to do that for them.”

The new shop is at 25031 Riding Plaza, near the Home Depot.

Photos by Anita Klimko.