The King of Yogurt
Prince Howard of Schultz, the man who would be our entertainment king, also wants to feed us frozen yogurt. Yes, the man who brought you Frappuccino wants you to start licking his Pinkberry.
The instrument is Maveron, a private investment firm Schultz and Wall Street banker Dan Levitan started ten years ago. (Levitan, then with Schroder Wertheim, had handled the Starbucks IPO.) Maveron, duh, is a mashup of maverick and vision. They've put money into local startups like Cranium, food service like Potbelly Sandwich Works, and sure things like eBay, Motley Fool, Shutterfly and Drugstore.com.
Now it's Pinkberry, a West Hollywood dispenser of frozen yogurt founded by two immigrants from South Korea. Not yet three years old, Pinkberry already has 33 stores, mostly in southern California. (The state of California, says it's not really yogurt, though, since it lacks sufficient bacteria.) Schultz has plans to take the brand nationwide despite the ice floes of competitors (Berri Good, Roseberry, Kiwiberry); he's particularly impressed with the "customer loyalty and emotional attachment" that Pinkberry has built up, likes it enough to spend $27.5 million. Seattlest thinks the real reason is that Schultz has fallen for Lady Tigra.
