Inside Chums, a new Ardmore dessert shop that sells tanghulu and TikTok-inspired dry yogurt bowls

Last year’s TikTok “For You” page has come to life inside a new Ardmore dessert shop that serves bowls of pastel-colored dry yogurt — a thoroughly strained, ultra-thick version of the original — and tanghulu, skewers of sugar-dipped fruit that are a popular Chinese street snack.

Gen-Z entrepreneur Grace Yang opened Chums at 45 E. Lancaster Ave. in August as a way to revive the whimsy from her childhood split between Shanghai and the Main Line, where street vendors selling candied fruit skewers and American frozen yogurt shops provided little bursts of joy, respectively.

Luckily for Yang, both items are having their moment on social media.

Chums’ offerings span crepes, compulsively slurpable yogurt drinks and smoothies, and a build-your-own-bowl bar where customers can top swirls of froyo or sherbet with toppings like gummy bears, fruit, and chocolate sauce drizzles. But the menu’s true centerpieces are tanghulu and the signature mounds of colorful strained yogurt.

Yang said videos of tanghulu starting taking off on TikTok and RedNote early last year. Users gained thousands of views by posting videos of themselves crunching on the candied fruit, or narrowly avoiding burns as they tried — and failed— to recreate the deceptively simple snack at home.

Then, in summer 2024, videos of people straining the excess whey and moisture from store-bought yogurt through cheesecloth for days at a time started to go viral. The resulting concoctions were dubbed “dry yogurt:” A labneh-like substance often molded into balls and topped with fancifully arranged fruit and granola.

“It’s easy to make dry yogurt very pretty,” said Yang, 24, who spent her high school years in Bryn Mawr. “We want to make everything visually iconic, very Instagrammable.”

Inside Chums, Yang and her staff boil sugar and water in a wok before spooling it onto skewers of grapes and strawberries that are placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet to cool. The secret, Yang said, is to wait until the sugar syrup browns and just begins to bubble to coat the skewers. A single skewer costs $5 and a set of two is $9.

Yang has vivid memories of tanghulu skewers hanging off the sides of street vendor carts in Shanghai during winters, where they are sold as a Lunar New Year treat. Traditional tanghulu involves candying hawthorn berries, but Chums uses strawberries, grapes, and orange slices. The skewers are among the store’s bestsellers, according to Yang.

“Young kids come in and say, ‘I know this one from TikTok,’” she said.

When the Inquirer visited Chums in late October, Sage Haltiwanger had driven from Brewerytown to Ardmore just to try Chums’ tanghulu. The snack is hard to find in Philly, they said, and hovers just above their skill set as a home cook.

“This is perfect,” Haltiwanger, 25, said after biting into a candied grape. “The crunch is the best part ... It’s really hard to make at home, especially with [the] caramelization because you can burn the sugar really quickly.”

Yang said the majority of Chums customers are students from the surrounding colleges — the same generation that came of age during the frozen yogurt shop boom of the 2010s. Gen-Z is driving a mild, nostalgia-powered froyo resurgence that has yet to fully hit Philly.

“People miss it,” Yang said.

While Chums’ frozen yogurt doesn’t look all that different from that of a locally owned Pinkberry competitor, their cold-strained yogurt stands out. By straining the excess liquid and whey, the resulting yogurt has more protein and a lower lactose content than traditional yogurt.

The straining process can take up to two days, Yang said, with 100 pounds of milk yielding just 5 pounds of yogurt. Chums uses a hydraulic press to make the straining go quicker. The store goes through roughly 100 pounds of yogurt and 2,000 pounds of milk per week.

The result is an ultra-thick consistency that reminds Yang of a Dairy Queen blizzard. “You can turn [a bowl] upside down and the yogurt won’t fall,” she said.

Yang graduated from Radnor High School in 2019 before heading to Lafayette College, where she graduated in 2024 with a degree in art and design — experience she draws on to punch up Chums’ yogurt bowls.

Each bowl is meticulously topped with even rings of fruit and granola, each blueberry or shred of coconut spaced just so. Apple slices are arranged like flower petals atop white peach yogurt for the Golden Orchard bowl. The Midnight Dream — the store’s most popular bowl — includes blueberry yogurt topped with blackberries, chocolate granola, and coconut. From a distance, the arrangement looks like rings of a planet.

“It’s all about balance and symmetry,” Yang said.

She also designed the store’s mascot, Chummy, a cherubic white cat and dopamine addict who wears pink bandannas. An oversized Chummy sits with outstretched paws outside the storefront. Inside, Yang swapped traditional chairs for stools 3D-printed in the shape of paw-prints. Her hand-painted prints of Chummy dancing and lounging hang on the walls.

The store’s name comes from the word “chum,” as in close friend. It was the only word that encapsulated the vibe of her dream yogurt shop, Yang said.

“I want this to be a place friends can hang out,” she said. “A place that feels really warm and fun.”

Chums, 45 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore; 267-889-7664, chumsardmore.com