Pinkberry Company

Pinkberry is spooning out some cold hard cash to end a class-action lawsuit. Ron Graves, chief executive of the Los Angeles-based company, said Thursday that Pinkberry had settled the suit filed by disgruntled customers contending that the popular frozen treat might not be yogurt. "We're really happy to put the debate behind us," he said. "There was a lot of misinformation swirling out there -- everything from it isn't really yogurt to there weren't live and active cultures. . . .

FOR a guy who has yet to officially open his business in the U.S., the president of fledgling frozen yogurt company Red Mango is having a very good day. "We just installed a machine in Leonardo DiCaprio's office," Dan Kim says from the South Korea-based firm's office near LAX. "Now he wants a machine delivered to his temporary home in New York. Apparently, he heard about the rats at Pinkberry's New York store." Kim laughs at his own cheap shot.

In Venice, where development is a dirty word and the eclecticism of Abbot Kinney Boulevard's shops and restaurants is beloved, there is a new scourge. And its name is Pinkberry. It's not that the newly arrived outpost of the wildly popular frozen dessert hasn't generated a flock of beach-side patrons. It has. But it has also drawn the ire of a group of local citizens fervently opposed to any chain store setting up shop on Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

Watch out world, a frozen treat could be the next latte. A venture capital firm co-founded by Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz has purchased a large serving of the crazy successful, sweet-yet-tart-dessert chain Pinkberry Inc. for $27.5 million, the firm, Maveron, said late Monday. Schultz and Dan Levitan, the other founder of Seattle-based Maveron, want L.A.-based Pinkberry to expand beyond Southern California, where it has 28 stores, and New York, where it has five.