In the seven years it has been in business, Pinkberry Inc. has focused on doing one thing really well: serving frozen yogurt.

The L.A. company’s success quickly started a trend and competition spiraled. Meanwhile, Greek yogurt has gained popularity in grocery stores.

Pinkberry is now making dramatic changes in an effort to capitalize on today’s taste for Greek yogurt. It’s opening for breakfast and adding coffee to the menu.

Last week, a handful of Pinkberry stores began opening early – at 8 a.m. – in Los Angeles; Boston; and Washington, D.C. The West Hollywood company has been testing the thick, nonfrozen yogurt at the Beverly Drive Pinkberry store in Beverly Hills since late May.

Pinkberry Chief Executive Ron Graves said offering Greek yogurt is a natural evolution.

“We’ve always said we were going to be true to yogurt,” he said. “What you’re finding now is the Greek yogurt market is becoming very, very robust and popular.”

Greek yogurt is creamier and has a more distinctive tang than the yogurt Americans have long been used to eating. It’s made by straining regular yogurt through cloth or paper, which creates its thick consistency. The strained yogurt can be sold frozen, but isn’t available in the popular soft-serve form. Pinkberry’s Greek yogurt is served cool, but not frozen.

Grocery store sales of Greek yogurt have soared from less than 10 percent of the total American yogurt market in 2009 to 35 percent today.

But the Greek yogurt trend isn’t all that’s driving the company’s decision to open for breakfast. With frozen yogurt stores popping up all over Los Angeles, from Encino’s Menchie’s Yogurt Inc. and Anaheim’s Yogurtland to dozens of mom-and-pop shops, competition for regular frozen yogurt has gotten intense.

Darren Tristano, executive vice president at Chicago market research firm Technomic Inc., said he suspects privately held Pinkberry is serving breakfast in an attempt to boost sour sales.

“It may be more out of necessity than opportunity,” he said. “It sounds more like the soft-serve frozen yogurt trend has hit them pretty hard, especially in this economy, and this may be what they need to do to survive. They’re not going to come out and say, ‘We haven’t been selling as much frozen yogurt, so we’re going to offer breakfast.’ But that’s what they’re doing.”

But Tristano said the company risks muddying its image as a high-quality yogurt shop.

“The big challenge for Pinkberry here is losing their brand identity with their customers,” he said. “I think if you start to think of Pinkberry as a place to get a coffee or Greek yogurt, that could really confuse their customers.”

Graves declined to disclose sales numbers, but said the decision to serve Greek yogurt came from the company’s culture of creativity.

“Great companies continue to innovate,” he said. “And that’s what you’ll see from Pinkberry.”

He said maintaining the integrity of the Pinkberry brand while adding Greek yogurt and coffee was an important consideration.

“We’ve been very careful not to go too far uphill, to not change who we are,” he said. “We’re not about coffee, we’re a yogurt company. Pinkberry Greek is just another product that fits very well with who we are. It’s a huge, growing trend and we want to be the ones to help people experience it at its best at retail.”

Doubling options

When Pinkberry began serving frozen yogurt in 2005, customers could only choose two flavors: plain or green tea. The chain grew at an impressive clip. Even when competitors began popping up throughout Los Angeles offering a dozen or more flavors, Pinkberry kept it simple with six.

But with Greek yogurt added to the mix, things are more complex. Stores that carry the nonfrozen yogurt offer six topping combinations, three of them sweet and three savory. That’s twice as many options customers used to have.

The Greek yogurt also marks a cultural shift from the chain’s Korean roots. In addition to featuring green tea as one of the chain’s first flavors, co-founder Kyekyung “Shelly” Hwang and her business partner, Young Lee, designed the store interiors in what they called an Asian modern style.

The company had to redesign topping trays at the counter for Pinkberry stores that will serve Greek yogurt. The expanded toppings now include savory items such as tomatoes, chili powder, bell peppers and olives. Sweeter additions include strawberry puree and cinnamon-infused honey.

Pinkberry introduced Greek yogurt in 17 of its nearly 200 stores – four in Los Angeles, seven in Boston and six in Washington. L.A. participants include the stores in Beverly Hills, at the Westfield mall in Century City, on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and at the Marina Waterside in Marina del Rey.

But while Pinkberry is opening most of those stores early to serve breakfast, Graves said the company is marketing Greek yogurt as an anytime snack. And It’s selling meal-size portions, too.

“We’re finding that people are consuming Greek yogurt throughout the day,” he said. “People might eat the savory options later in the day, kind of like a salad because there are vegetables in it. But we’re open early in the morning because that’s when most American’s eat Greek yogurt.”

The Greek yogurts pack twice as much protein as regular yogurt. A four-ounce “snack” serving has about 12 grams of protein and costs $4.25. A six-ounce “meal” serving has about 18 grams of protein and costs $5.95.

Coffee business

Adding to Pinkberry’s new complexity: Stores that serve Greek yogurt will also serve coffee and espresso.

Tristano said serving coffee is a necessary component to serving breakfast, even if it seems out of place in a yogurt shop.

“If you’re going to do breakfast, you have to have coffee,” he said. “It’d be crazy to think you’d stop there for yogurt and then go somewhere else for coffee.”

Graves said the company put a lot of thought into the coffee it serves, even though it won’t be the company’s focus.

“It’s a very high-quality proprietary blend that we think pairs well with our yogurt,” he said. “It’s a little sweeter, less acidic.”

Customers can get the medium roast brew hot or iced. The iced coffee has a mint-flavored option. A small coffee costs $1.50 and a small latte costs $2.50.

But Pinkberry could end up losing customers by serving coffee. That’s because making a latte takes significantly longer than topping a yogurt serving and no one likes to stand in long lines.

Tristano said customers could decide to skip Pinkberry just to avoid waiting.

“When you add a hot beverage into the mix, you create a slowdown in the speed of service,” he said. “If they’re trying to push customers through at peak times, that could have a negative effect.”

Graves said the company expects to gain customers not lose them.

“I think Pinkberry Greek will attract new customers,” he said. “This product will have customers come in on different occasions, in addition to when they might normally come.”