Menchie’s

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt
8705 109th Street
Edmonton, AB

Last week I got an email from the awesome people at Menchie’s Garneau, inviting me to a pre-grand opening event being hosted for some local bloggers. It would be a chance for us to see what Menchie’s is all about, a blogurt fest, if you will. I happily accepted and invited my friend, Laura, to join me. Menchie’s, a franchise based chain of frozen yogurt shops, was founded in California in 2007. Menchie’s has started expanding into the Canadian market, with over 30 locations across the country already and more opening all the time. Well, Menchie’s can now add another pin on their map, as Edmonton now has their first location!

I arrived at Menchie’s on Saturday at 9:45 am, it was a little early to pull myself out of bed, but with the promise of free frozen yogurt, it was totally worth it. The 2 franchise owners were in town for the grand opening and they spoke very passionately about the Menchie’s brand. I definitely got the impression that they really wanted give their customers only the best, high quality product, while providing a fun and memorable experience.

I had always kind of wondered where the name “Menchie’s” came from and it turns out that it actually comes from the yiddish word mensch, which, according to Wikipedia, means a “person of integrity and honour.” I was actually familiar with the word mensch already, but I never would have guessed that was where the frozen yogurt shop had got their name from. Pretty cool!

After learning about Menchie’s, we were given the opportunity to try out all of the different flavours. There were 16 different flavours, something for every palate; from original tart to peanut butter smores to mint. After we got a chance to sample the yogurts, we were then tasked with the job of making our own yogurt creation to be judged by a panel of 3 people.

After some intense brainstorming, Laura and I came up with our creations. Laura’s creation, entitled Rocky Mountain Magic, was a chocolate yogurt mountain, topped with a coconut yogurt peak and surrounded by various different sweets and chocolate toppings.

My creation, entitled Tropical Maui Wowie, was a swirl of coconut and pineapple frozen yogurt, surrounded by a variety of different fruits (both natural and candy) and then finished off with a blue shark gummy, circling the “island.” Clearly we were a couple of geniuses at work.

After much serious deliberation the prizes were handed out by Menchie, himself (herself?). I am pleased to announce that my tropical creation claimed third prize! Thanks to the awesome people at Menchie’s Garneau, for the generous gift card for my 3rd place finish and for the fun event! I’m looking forward to coming back and making another delicious yogurt creation. I’ll try not to spend it all at once! 🙂

Overall, I would say we had a great time. There were a ton of delicious yogurt flavours, lots of different toppings, the location was bright, clean and inviting, and the staff were super helpful and friendly. What I really liked about the yogurt was that it had a wonderful, creamy texture. Sometimes I find some frozen yogurts are a little icy, but not this one! I think that this store is going to do really well, especially since it is so close to the University, so I imagine it will stay fairly busy. My only “complaint” was that they didn’t have as many fruity flavours of frozen yogurt as I would have liked, but that’s really just my own personal preference. I’d love to see a mango or passionfruit frozen yogurt sometime, yum!

After we finished up at Menchie’s, we walked past the huge mass of people lined up down the block for the free frozen yogurt being offered for the grand opening and headed to Saskatchewan Drive for a walk through the river valley and the Whyte Ave area. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Edmonton!

Happy Monday!