Yolé takes London by storm

The international ice cream and frozen yoghurt brand opened its first UK outlets in Lakeside and Canary Wharf. This was soon followed by stores in Covent Garden and Shaftesbury Avenue before starting off 2022 with an outlet in Westfield.

Yolé’s move to the UK was aided by best friends, Milad Nawaz and Salman Qureshi, bringing their experience as franchisees of Subway.

In 2019, they became the master franchisees of Wok&Go, a food store where customers can see their noodles cooked in front of them. In September, they opened a store in Shoreditch that was half Wok&Go and half Yolé, bringing the brands together for the first of several joint outlets.

This latest store saw Yolé launch a sugar-free bubble tea and was its first franchise store.

Now Yolé is looking to sign on more franchisees as it moves into the next stage of expansion, including stores across the UK, Europe and the US.

“We’d been looking for new challenges and Yolé ticked all our boxes,” said Milad. “I want to enjoy a dessert while not worrying about the calories and now thanks to Yolé many other people can as well.

“We started in London as we felt if we could successfully launch the brand here then it could be something we could take across the country.”

Yolé landed on UK shores last summer after establishing a strong presence in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Singapore, Cambodia, and Indonesia. This year it has continued its international growth, signing up more countries.

“Our plan initially was to open one store to see if the customers would like it and see if the brand would work in this country,” explained Salman. “To our surprise, despite the challenges that the hospitality industry has faced, we were able to open five stores in our first year and the response has been incredible.

“Now we want to roll it out across the UK and to do that we need franchises. Our aim is to sign up potential franchises to at least three stores so we can spread this brand of healthy desserts to a wider audience.”