City officials have allowed Yogurt Mill to bring a trailer to the Ceres Community Center for four hours for three consecutive Wednesday afternoons as they test out the market for a possible shop in Ceres.
“They do have a lot of friends and they’ve done a lot of community work with the Ceres Unified School District so they just wanted to bring the trailer out to see how the residents of Ceres would do,” said Julian Aguirre, the city’s Economic Development manager.
Customers of Supermom’s Frozen Yogurt & More, which has been in the Richland Shopping Center since 2010, have voiced their concerns and question the city’s about facilitating competition.
Customers may have incorrectly assumed that the city recruited Yogurt Mill to bring their trailer to service community center crowds when the first choice should have been Supermom’s, which also has a trailer. But that’s not what happened, said Aguirre.
He said the company asked to be downtown for the test period and the city found a spot in the center’s parking lot. Yogurt Mill obtained and paid for a temporary use permit.
Aguirre said his goal is strike a balance between helping existing businesses and being supportive to all kinds of businesses wanting to come in to bolster sales tax revenues to the city.
“I do my best to say yes to everybody and the businesses that are currently in here have an opportunity to reach out to us to see what we can do provide more service and business to them.”
City Manager Doug Dunford said that the city is “constantly contacting businesses to see if they want to come in to Ceres” but that Yogurt Mill approached the city and the city responded in “spontaneous” fashion.
“They want to test and see if it’s worth their while, before they decide to set up shop,” said Dunford. “We can’t restrict trade.”
Yogurt Mill has three locations in Modesto and one in Turlock.
George Borden of Supermom’s Frozen Yogurt stressed that he doesn’t want to bash the city’s efforts to attract more businesses. Instead he said he is encouraged by his faithful customers who have been rallying around his businesses and supporting established Ceres businesses.
“I’ve never been put into a position where I’ve actually got customers that care about something like this,” said Borden. “We’ve had probably five or six people reach out directly to us and say, hey, ‘what’s going on? Why are they in town?’”
Borden said the tight economy has caused Supermom’s business volume to flat-line since 2022 because fro-yo takes a backseat to buying groceries and other necessities.
“Here’s the story – and we’ve told this to the economic development director – if Yogurt Mill comes into town, likely Supermom’s goes out of business. They’re a more powerful brand. Coffee is obviously a portion of our business too but knowing how the yogurt business is affected by the economy and how little disposable income there is, it’d be really hard to split between two businesses, I would imagine.”
Still, Borden said he respects the free market system and feels that new business choices are good for consumers. He also understands the mission of the city to expand its tax base.
“They are potentially looking at Ceres,” said Aguirre. “If they come or not, I don’t have any control over that.”
