I like YoCherry

I like YoCherry.  Whaaaaaat?  That's right.  I said I like YoCherry.  That sentiment is rolling off the tongues of a lot of Bermuda residents recently, and the buzz is only going to get louder on the streets of Hamilton as the Friday night crowd rolls out in their best.  Pretty sure it is going to be a running fodder for the construction crews as well...Hey Baby....

As Bermuda enters the fifth year of it's recession, there are a lot of changes happening on this little rock.  The majority haven't shown an obvious benefit as of yet.  Prices of everything are going up, wages are going down, and everything is getting stretched thin.  Visible development appears to have slowed to a near halt -- except for the building of the Acute Care Wing at King Edward Memorial Hospital, but even that shows a very different stage of development on the side that faces the street and the public than the side that faces the old hospital and is not seen by the public unless they have to come to the hospital.  Perception is more important than reality in the politics of public works.

All of this considered, it is no wonder that everyone is talking about YoCherry, and it's all been good!  YoCherry is a new business that opened last Friday on 8 Bermudiana Road.  A lot of locals will have fond but fuzzy memories of that location and are trying to place it...yes, it was formerly a nightclub called Opus (where i first heard and saw a rather strange video called Poker Face and became a Lady Gaga fan).  YoCherry is the island's first frozen yogurt shop.  I am not sure what inspired the owners to choose YoCherry as the name, but i suspect it was a good sense of humour, and it certainly seems to be catchy and might be the sign of a pretty good marketing plan.

I decided that "I like YoCherry" or "I don't like YoCherry" would make for a perfect, light, ridiculous blog post on a Friday, so I made a point of heading there right after a 500 cal burn at the gym to determine first hand if YouCherry was getting the thumbs up or thumbs down.  Obviously -- it was good!  It's a small shop, decorated in vivid red and lime green, including the chairs outside.  As you enter, you take your own paper bowl and choose from the flavours of frozen yogurt dispensers on the wall (i believe there were 9) and then there is a candy topping bar, and a fruit and chocolate topping bar, and for the finale a sauce selection.  Cost is determined by the weight of your bowl.  Those of you who know the Mongolie Grill, and how much I love it, will appreciate how fond I am of this concept.  Choose what you want in exactly the proportions you want, flavor specifically to your tastes and pay for the exact amount you are going to eat.  It's perfect!

So, I can't remember all of the options, but to give you an idea, i decided to sample a little bit of a few flavours.  Orange creamsicle had already been devoured by the steady stream of customers going through, so I chose a bit of Valencia Orange, Tahitian Vanilla, and Blueberry.  They were all good, but I think Blueberry was my favorite.  My topping assortment was a bit scattered and possibly not  well thought out, but i still enjoyed a couple of now frozen gumballs, m&m's, and candy hearts with a smattering of Skors bits under a drizzle of liquid Giardelli chocolate sauce.  The price was pretty reasonable in Bermuda.  Probably less than a smoothy (which is usually $8 and up at various places).  I rang in around $7...i blame the weight of the toppings...but it was more than enough.  I think I could make a pretty delicious little snack for about $4 with a little practice.

The owners of the new business are are couple, she is in the reinsurance industry and he was in construction.  The economic downturn has slowed construction jobs, so this was their way of hitting the reset button on life.  In a business move virtually unheard of in Bermuda, rumour has it that they are sometimes still serving customers at 1am on a Friday night.  A coworker went in and they said "hey, as long as people want to buy, we will stay open and serve."  That's a pretty special attitude in a town where most pubs serve nothing but potatoe chips after 10 (remember, no McDonald's either), and sometimes some aren't even serving alcohol after 10 if it's a weeknight.  I think this is the attitude that Bermuda business needs to pay attention to, and I am quite happy to be one of the customers welcoming it!

I will leave you now on this Friday afternoon until Monday.  But please feel free to post below and tell me...how do you like YoCherry?  Keep it clean folks!  See you in a few days!

https://www.facebook.com/YoCherryBermuda