Paula Armour was working at her frozen yogurt shop in 1987 when a man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts walked in, ordered a blueberry smoothie and left.
Five minutes later, he was back. To her surprise, he asked if she would have dinner with him.
Paula still owns Humphrey Yogart in Sherman Oaks. But now she runs it alongside her husband of 20 years, Jim Sheftel -- the very man who ordered the blueberry smoothie that day.
"He came in for a smoothie and got a wife," Paula, 54, quipped. Although he liked his drink, "he liked me even better."
Just months after they met, Jim joined Paula behind the counter at Humphrey, becoming a co-owner around the same time they became husband and wife. It hasn't always been easy, they admit, as the Sheftels' contrasting personalities -- Jim is free-spirited and easygoing while Paula is cautious and grounded -- sometimes clash.
But over the years, they've "really got it down to a science," Paula said, alternating days in the shop, developing ideas together and sticking to a well-defined division of labor.
"What has made it easy and successful over the years is we complement each other," she said. "He'll see the big picture and I'm more into the details. He'll come up with the great ideas, and I'll execute them."
"Like with any family business, you trust the people you're related to," said Barry Graff, a San Diego-based family business consultant. "When you succeed, there's a special pride in that: 'We've done this together.' There's nothing like that."
Situated in a shopping plaza on Van Nuys Boulevard, Humphrey has developed a loyal following of customers who crowd the little shop with the quirky name for its espresso drinks, panini, salads and frozen yogurt.
Although Humphrey sells traditional ice cream and soft-serve frozen yogurt, its most popular item is its hard-packed nonfat yogurt, which is scooped just like ice cream. Customers choose from four yogurts -- vanilla, chocolate, tart and soy -- and then pick from 45 "blend-ins," including fresh fruit, candy, cookies and nuts, which are swirled into the yogurt in a blending machine.
Prices start at $2.25 and increase depending on size and the number of blend-ins. The Sheftels say they serve about 500 frozen desserts every day.
Humphrey opened in 1984 during the frozen yogurt boom under the ownership of Maria and Raphael Baker, another husband-and-wife team. Two years later, Paula, then a field consultant for McDonald's Corp., bought the shop from the Bakers for $110,000.
