Londoners queue two hours for dessert dubbed ‘best thing to happen since One Direction’

On August 20, a two-hour queue clogged the streets in Notting Hill as cult Australian frozen yoghurt brand Yo-Chi opened its doors for the first time.

Fans went crazy for the brands UK debut, branding the dessert store the ‘best thing to happen since One Direction’, and onlookers claimed the queue nearly reach High Street Kensington.

It’s been a viral hit since it kick-started Melbourne’s self-serve frozen yogurt scene with its first store back in 2012.

But it’s not any old fro-yo parlour. Yo-Chi’s London store spans 2,000sqft across two floors, seating 120 customers, with endless topping stations after you’ve chosen one of the signature frozen yoghurt flavours.

In fact, it’s their biggest ever branch to date. It even has a DJ booth and a disco ball, with co-owner of the store Oliver Allis claiming that it’s ‘become like the new club’ in Australia, with bouncers guarding the doors on Friday and Saturday nights.

As one influencer said at the soft-launch: ‘Who needs to go to Clapham on a night out when you’ve got night club music and frozen yoghurt?’

Metro got a peak inside before opening day: expect self-serve fro-yo machines with nine flavours, including matcha and salted butterscotch, plus 30 topping options. 

And if you’re not sure what combination to choose, co-founder Oliver Allis, tells us his favourites are açaí with ‘signature tart’ (the chain’s original fro-yo flavour), topped with oat and cinnamon crumble, biscoff, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, and chocolate chunk cookie cake.

This spot uses yoghurt made from Australian cow’s milk, which makes for fro-yo that is tangy, rather than too sweet.

We didn’t hold back, trying three scoops: matcha with strawberries, chocolate soil, and pistachio kataifi spread. You can go much heavier on the toppings than we did, but you pay by weight so keep that in mind to avoid getting a shock at the till. Ours comes to £7.20

Co-owner and chief brand officer, Oliver Allis, tells us there’s Australian hospitality at the heart of Yo-Chi. ‘When you come here you’re getting genuine welcomes and staff asking “how are you going?”

‘It’s a beautiful venue made for all ages. You can come here up until 11 or 12 o’clock at night and enjoy a Yo-Chi.’

One fan of the store, Lucy Sedgwick explained the hype behind the brand on TikTok. ‘People that have never lived or been to Australia probably do not understand the magnitude of Yo-Chi opening in this country,’ she says.

‘Yo-Chi is the single greatest export of that nation. People will say to you, “it’s just frozen yoghurt, how good can it be?”, and you should not listen to these people.’

She explains you’ve got ‘every topping you could possibly think of’ including sweets, chocolate, fruit, nuts, seeds, and crumble. Then there’s a hot plate where there are warm cookies, brownies, and warm sauce to drizzle ‘all over your masterpiece’.

‘At the end, you’re salivating so much around your mouth that you actually do not care how much this beauty costs,’ she says. ‘I would like to thank the Yo-Chi gods for arriving in this country.’

Gushed over by popular influencers like Sophia Tuxford and Cinzia Baylis-Zullo from The Girls Bathroom podcast, the store is proof that the 2010 dessert trend is well and truly back.

Fans online shared they were thinking of travelling from Devon and Essex just to try Yo-Chi, and Vhari Russell, founder of The Food Marketing Experts, says it’s our love of nostalgia driving the frozen yoghurt comeback.

‘There’s definitely a strong 00s/2010s throwback flavour to the fro-yo resurgence; it was everywhere a decade ago, riding the same wave as juice cleanses and “frozen yoghurt is healthier than ice cream” messaging,’ the food trends expert tells Metro.

‘Chains like Pinkberry and Yog defined a whole era of self-serve, pay-by-weight dessert bars, and for a while it felt like every UK high street had one.

‘What’s interesting is that the US and Australian brands entering the UK now aren’t just reheating that era; they’re leaning into nostalgia marketing deliberately.

‘They know their audience: consumers in their late 20s and 30s who remember that first wave fondly, and a younger cohort who are discovering it fresh through TikTok’s appetite for anything retro-but-remixed.’

‘It’s dessert as entertainment rather than a lighter alternative to ice cream, which feels like a much more honest pitch anyway,’ Vhari adds.

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