She Said Yes To Every Customer And Built A Global Empire Doing It. The Menchie's Fro Yo Story.

So there was this new wave of frozen yogurt, and we knew that we either scaled quickly or someone else was gonna take the idea and scale. So it's a race Every entrepreneur has a nightmare. Your idea works, which means someone else just had that idea too. Danna Balas got there first with Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, and then she did the only sensible thing to do. She ran fast, she built fast, she expanded fast. Today, the founder of Menchie's build-your-own froyo experience has become a global franchise sensation, and Danna's going to share all the details of what it genuinely takes to build something that customers love and keep coming back for. And she shares how her Israeli background and upbringing help turn one store into a worldwide brand. I'm your host, Jennifer Weissman. Welcome to the Israeli Trailblazer Show. Hello, Donna. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you so much for having me on today. You've built an empire. You've got hundreds of froyo stores around the world. Yes. We are at about 350 right now and growing in a variety of countries as well. Donna, you're Israeli. How has that influenced or contributed to how you started Menchie's? Coming from an Israeli background, everyone has had to be the creator and figure out how to make things happen. Many of us have heard the stories how our grandparents came to Israel, how our parents started in Israel. And there was nothing there, so you have to create whatever it is that you need, you want. And there's this sense of making things happen. I think that's very much part of the Israeli mindset of, you want something, you create it. You get it done. You figure it out. You can't count on someone else to come up with it or make it happen or figure it out for you. This mindset that Israelis had, is that what helped you scale one small yogurt shop into this large froyo empire? I didn't originally have the idea of scaling it. Our customers came in, and the amazing instant reaction they had gave me the, oomph to be like, "Okay, well, we gotta scale, and we gotta scale now." Because at the time that the first Menchie's opened, Pinkberry was super popular. You had to figure out how to do it fast. A lot of other brands were doing something that was very different than what Menchie's, sought out to do, which is the creator of your own perfect frozen yogurt dessert, which is where my sweet tooth came in to coming up with the idea because I love frozen yogurt. I love sweets. I've always had a sweet tooth, but I didn't want to commit to one flavor or one topping or one swirl. What does Menchie's mean? So when I met my ex-husband, I was working at a local synagogue in Los Angeles, and he met me, and he's like, "Oh, look at all these things you're doing. You're such a mensch." And I'm like, "Don't call me a mensch. A mensch is a guy. I'm not a guy." And he goes, "Fine. Then you're Menchie." And so as we were dating, Menchie was my nickname. And when we started coming up with the business plan and how we were going to move this forward, we were like, "What do we come up with? We don't want to call it, , Yogurt Stop." And he's like, " you're the one with the sweet tooth. We should call it Menchie's." Menchie, for the rest of the world who is listening, means what? So a mensche is Yiddish, also German, but like for a good person, a good, upstanding, the kind of person people want to be. Good soul in the world. Yeah. Even the name of your business is rooted in Judaism yes. Is also rooted in a connection to Israel. We've opened stores in some very interesting places, including in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. When we first talked about those franchisees being interested, I would say, "Amit, aren't you worried? It's called Mensches." And he goes, "We're bringing smiles to the world. We're bringing peace to the Middle East one smile at a time." There's something about frozen yogurt, about treats, about having an experience with your friends, your family, whatever, that disarms. It's not about politics. It's not about Judaism. It's not about any of that. It's about the fun, the character, the feel. A testament to that is that people in these countries were happy to bring Mensches to these countries with the name and the logo standing as is. Enjoying the show? Please take five seconds and tap a five-star review wherever you're listening to this show. It helps more people find this podcast and grow the Israeli Trailblazers community. What aspects really felt good to you about going fast and scaling Menchie's, 'cause your company's not that old. Well, we just celebrated 18 years since the open, chai, of the first store. When I first started working on the look and feel of the store, I was very interested in making it something that was more unique, the logo, the colors, the look, the feel, more than just your mom-and-pop shop or your neighborhood store that felt good to come in. We got to a point where we were scaling so fast, it felt really good because it felt like, "Hey, we did this in this way. This did connect with people in the way that I wanted to and was hoping to, and so people want this." And it was exciting that people were like, "Can we open here? Can we open there?" My very first business plan that I went to banks with and whatnot was, "Okay, we're gonna open a family store, and maybe in 10 years we'll have five family stores." And franchising wasn't the initial idea when we first opened. It was the aftereffect of the response that we got. So yes, I wanted to grow and brand, but I didn't really know what franchising was when we opened the first store. This was a concept I had to learn. And so we had to learn franchising and expansion and all of it really fast at the same time. Having people react to the brand in the way that they did, and wanting us to open in their area, and wanting to open their own store so quickly was really powerful and really gave me, like, the, "Hey, we've got something here." And there were two early moments that really struck me. One of them was that within five weeks of opening, I got the first call that someone said, "Hey, are you guys a franchise, and how do I franchise?" And I was like, "What?" And I was like, "Let me get back to you." The fact that within five weeks of opening the first store that people were r- you know, was just to me amazing. And then the other really cool thing that happened pretty quickly, which is also part of being in Los Angeles, a production company for Paris Hilton's... I think it was called The Simple Life, when she was on, like, a farm show or something. The production company asked if they could come and film in the store, and I was like, "Sure. Okay." You know, this is before we ever thought like, "Oh, would there be fees or whatever?" I was just so excited that we were getting noticed, right? And this was early on. This was the first summer that we were open, maybe two months after opening. And when the production company came in, they're like, "Okay, we're gonna go through the store and we're gonna tape everything that doesn't have your logo. We don't have permission." And they're walking through the store, and she comes out after. She goes, "I don't know that I've ever seen this before. I have nothing to cover in your store other than the Visa and MasterCard logo on the way in." And I was like, "That's so cool." So these moments of like, hey, people want to franchise, and look, we're so well-branded. And so from the first store, if you look at the first store's design, logo, feel, layout Yes, we've had some updates. We've used some materials that last a little longer, but for the most part, the first store that opened looks like the stores that open today. And that, to me, is incredibly powerful and incredibly exciting to see that what I created with that first store was so much more than a froyo store. My son yesterday, uh, who's 13, was asking me about someone, and I said, "Oh, they're really, really famous," and, and he goes, "Mom, you're famous." And I'm like, "I'm not famous." He goes, "You started Menchie's. You're famous." I gotta love that kid. You built a froyo empire based on some chutzpah why do you think that essence of Judaism is really misunderstood or lost-.. with much of the world? I think there's, two reasons. I think one of them is that people don't understand... I can't think of another religion that is an ethno-religion that has this so much more, like, you can be Jewish without being, , a practicing Jew, and that's not really clearly understood by a lot of the Western world. Because you're either Christian or Protestant or Ba- or whatever it is, or you're not. And you can be Jewish and not Jew-ish, I guess- Yeah ... 'cause people call it the Jewiest one they know. And I think the other one is a lot of lost in translation. Michelangelo made Moses with horns because the translation of ray of sun and a horn are the same word in Hebrew. So it was translated as horn instead of ray of sun. But I think the lost in translation is, like, if the Hebrew phrase says, "Or lagoyim," and they're like, "Oh, you think you're a light unto other nations," and they're not translating the essence, they're translating the literal words, and that loses in translation. Like, the Chosen People, when you look and read the stories, it was like God went to this nation and they said no. God went to this nation and they said no. And God went to the Jews and they said no at first, and then they said okay. You learn about the history of the Jews, especially in Europe. So okay, people say that Jews are greedier, they're always dealing with money. Okay, they were kicked out of every other profession and forced to be the money lenders and the tax collectors, and then they did what they were doing well, so now we don't like them. The Jews started Hollywood because they were kicked out of being doctors and lawyers and whatever, and then Hollywood takes off, and oh my God, the Jews took over Hollywood. They don't wanna learn the history. People don't wanna understand what gets people to where they are and how they got there. We have lost our way with educating our Jewish youth and our non-Jewish youth. And that is a huge part of the problem that we have today because there's a lot of even diaspora Jews that don't know anything about how and why we are where we are and the situation, and are even fighting against their own people because they don't understand their history and their roots. And to me, this is a bigger problem in the Jewish community that we messed up. We messed up educating our children because if we had given them the education to understand how the Jews got to where they are today and what was behind that, we wouldn't have as many problems as we do today. This clickbait misinformation world that we're living in has become very dangerous. It's very hard to fight disinformation. From one frozen yogurt store to a global franchise sensation, Dana Ballas showed us that Israeli chutzpah, determination, and a great customer-based idea wins. Please subscribe and leave a five-star review if this episode resonated with you. I'm Jennifer Weissman. Until next time.