Tutti Frutti
According to their website, Tutti Frutti is a frozen yogurt retailer with 100 planned stores worldwide. Lucky for us, Hope Valley Square in Durham has one of them. A Tutti Frutti recently opened in the same shopping center as Only Burger, Pop’s Backdoor, Rick’s Diner and the coming soon Bull Street Gourmet & Market.
Tutti Frutti is the first self-serve, pay-by-weight frozen yogurt shop to make it to Durham. Tutti Frutti feels very similar to the popular self-serve yogurt shop in Chapel Hill called Orange Leaf/ Yopop. You grab a cup, fill it up with the flavors of your choice and load on the toppings. It costs 39 cents per ounce. The Durham location has a dozen different flavors everyday and wide variety of fruit, cereal, nut and syrup toppings. All of the yogurt is low or non-fat. Specific nutrition facts can be found on their site.
Flavors on the day we stopped in included classic tart, blueberry, orange, mango, vanilla, chocolate, red velvet, birthday cake, cheesecake, coffee, cookies and cream, taro, almond, peanut butter and more. The fruit flavors we sampled were bright, tart and fresh and the creamy all tasted richly indulgent. I really dug the taro, which had a complex sweet, rooty, almost buttery flavor. The only flavor that I didn’t care for was the red velvet, I couldn’t really tell a difference in it and the chocolate. For a decent portion that half-filled Tutti Frutti’s large cup, I paid $2.06 and despite some rather heaping portions no one in our group of four went over four dollars.
Local Yogurt still gets our vote as the best froyo in Durham, but it’s nice to have another option in town. Tutti Frutti has a fun, bright atmosphere with both indoor and outdoor seating. We’re guessing Hope Valley Square will be a popular spot this summer.
Hope Valley Square
3710 Shannon Road
919-381-5035
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I generally agree.I generally disagree.
I personally don’t like flavored yogurts very much and always get natural/tart. I would say that Tutti Frutti and loyo’s natural are very similar. Not sure I could tell a difference.
The toppings at TF are far superior that loyo. More choice at TF, and I’ve always felt loyo skimps (and overcharges) on toppings.
And last, but especially not least, TF’s prices are an order of magnitude better than loyo. As in my wife I can get two large TF yogurts with lots of toppings for maybe the price of one loyo with one topping. I’m always willing to pay more for high-quality or local ingredients, but since neither loyo nor TF are truly local, and I find the quality to be at most very similar, I’ll stick with TF from now on.
Twice last week I drove by both Local Yogurt and Tutti Fruitti. Local Yogurt had maybe 3-4 people inside, Tutti Frutti had a line outside the door. IMHO this largely boils down to price…
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Also, Local Yogurt just opened a new outlet on Erwin Road (where Copa Vida Coffee used to be) next to Duke. Seeing as many of their customers at the Rockwood location were Duke students, and Tutti Frutti opened just down the road from Rockwood … I wonder if that location is long for this world.
But agreed that the price difference between Local Yogurt and Tutti Frutti is very dramatic, with no real difference in quality or “localness”
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Thanks for the review! I went there after reading this review, and I have to say I was sorta disappointed in one thing.
Their website says they have no sugar added flavors (made with Splenda or another sweetener), but when I asked the worker at the store, he said no – we don’t even make those. I told him I had seen them on the site and he said, no we won’t do it because they taste weird.
I dunno, I guess I was disappointed. Yes I realize this is a sweets store and probably isn’t healthy per say, but I would like to have the option of getting a no sugar added sample.
Especially for diabetic individuals or people with a special needs diet.
Other than that, the assortment of toppings was phenomenal and delicious. I especially liked how affordable it was and the abundance of fruit.
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My name is Phi Yen and I am a co-owner of TF. First, I want to apologize to http://www.ilovefetacheese.com for responses that one of my employees had made. Neglecting to teach them properly is my fault. Some of the products listed on the website are not available to us because they are liquid-based. TF is currently experimenting on making sugar-free and dairy-free powder-based yogurts so hopefully we will be serving those in a near future.
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Thank you very much for your reply!! I’m looking forward to visiting TF again in the futre.
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Why is Local Yogurt good?? I don’t get it. The decor is uninspiring. It is liquid-based mix so you need to add more sugar, it’s expensive, and it doesn’t really taste good. Am I missing something? Is it because it’s “local”? Would you rather eat something that is “local” or something that tastes great?
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Uh…I eat it *because* it tastes good, *because* it’s tart and not overly sweetened. The whole local thing is just a bonus.
To each their own.
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What is local about Local Yogurt?
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The ownership? Though I guess now that there are 4 of them statewide, it’s a little less local.
However, good for Local Yogurt for attempting to use local ingredients where possible (ie summer months they get some fruit locally), though that doesn’t include the actual yogurt nor most of the ingredients. So, as was said before, it and TF are about the same amount of local (though I assume the LoYo founders/owners do actually live in Durham and TF is a bigger chain). For me given the roughly equivalent quality, TF is just a far better deal.
to Cal, have you tasted others? I too thought it was good until I tasted real fro yo. Trust me.
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yes. but i’d like to know which places you consider real fro yo – please share
Why is Local Yogurt good?
They source everything they can locally – their chocolate curls are from Dolly Mama, their fruit is seasonal and from local farms, their caramel and chocolate sauces are housemade, their granola is Little Red Wagon, etc.
They support local Durham non-profits: http://www.localyogurt.com/blog/?cat=1
They have more innovative flavors – ie Lavender Honey in the spring. Take customer suggestions – adding peppermint and egg nog around the holidays.
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you’re saying that it’s good because it’s local. It also has to taste good.
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i like the cookies aand cream
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