Orange Leaf

Our Creative Planning Team traveled to a magical place this past Tuesday...

Orange Leaf Self Serve Frozen Yogurt.

Now, for those of you who missed the memo, Orange Leaf is a new business popping up all over America featuring multiple flavors of frozen yogurt conveniently displayed in self-serve dispensers.

This is the way it works: You choose your own cup (either large or mega!). Then you fill your cup with your favorite yogurt flavors. Then you travel through the fixin's bar - complete with fresh fruit, whole nuts, breakfast cereals, entire candy bars and every type of liquid sugar you can think of! And then you place your creation on a scale and pay just 33 cents per ounce! Incredible! Ingenious! Indigestion!

So, since our little Creative Team's goal is to creative better creative spaces, we decided to travel to Orange Leaf for a little cultural research...

And here are my team's top 3 observations on why this place is so popular:

1. "It's shiny and bright" - And who doesn't like shiny and bright, right? Amid such a dreary, dark, difficult world, it is good to add a little color and cheer.

2. "It is simple." - While you have multiple flavor and topping options, you ONLY come to Orange Leaf for frozen yogurt. How many businesses, organizations, and churches try to diversify TOO much and create confusion.

3. "People like pulling the lever." - It seems that today's society likes the ability to have input into what they are getting. Whether it's something trivial like yogurt or meaningful like faith, they want to be able to engage in the conversation about what that's going to look like. They are looking for ownership. They are looking for involvement. They are looking for meaning. And somehow they are finding that at Orange Leaf.

Right behind these comments, the most heard statement from my team was "Why is it called Orange Leaf?" To which Tyler Boggs promptly replied, "Because it's too small to be a tree!"

Whether that is true, I do not know, but I do know that we gained plenty of food for thought about what engages this generation and what it takes to create a creative space.

How about you? What are your reactions to our observations? What are your own thoughts about Orange Leaf or whatever your current favorite space is? And how do these translate to our pursuit of Jesus Christ and reaching this generation for Him?

Look forward to some thoughts:)