When Yala Greek Ice Cream opened in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2025, founder Chrys Kefalas was trying to do something much bigger than open another ice cream shop.

He wanted Americans to recognize Greek ice cream as something distinct.

A little more than a year later, Yala has served more than 150,000 scoops, created dozens of flavors, collaborated with some of the best-known names in American hospitality and expanded beyond its original Georgetown shop.

And now the story is circling back to where Kefalas first learned what Greek hospitality looked like in America.

Baltimore.

This week, Yala makes its Maryland debut at the Maryland State Fair through a partnership with Costas Inn, the Baltimore-area restaurant founded by Kefalas’ late godfather, Costas Triantafilos.

For Kefalas, it is more than another pop-up.

As a teenager, he greeted customers at Costas Inn and absorbed the lessons that generations of Greek-American restaurant families have passed down almost instinctively: take pride in what you serve, work harder than anyone expects and treat the people who come through the door like family.

Years later, those ideas would become part of the foundation of Yala.

A Business Built Around Papou

At the emotional center of the company is Kefalas’ grandfather, George Minadakis, who came to the United States from Arkasa on the Greek island of Karpathos.

At Yala, he is simply Papou.

“My grandfather, Papou, instilled in me the best of Greece,” Kefalas said. “He believed in taking pride in your work, caring deeply for people, and never settling for ‘good enough.’”

Those values shaped everything from the ingredients Kefalas sought out to the kind of experience he wanted customers to have.

Yala hand-batches its ice cream using farm-fresh A2 milk, with ingredients sourced locally as well as from Greece, the Mediterranean and other producers around the world. Many of its flavors incorporate Greek yogurt and ingredients that immediately evoke a Greek pantry: honey, pistachios, fruit preserves, filo, walnuts and citrus.

But Kefalas’ larger ambition has always gone beyond flavor.

He wants Greek ice cream to become a recognizable category in America.

The comparison he frequently makes is Greek yogurt. There was a time when Greek yogurt was unfamiliar to most American consumers. Today it occupies entire sections of supermarket dairy cases and has become one of the most successful examples of a Greek food tradition entering the American mainstream.

Kefalas believes Greek ice cream can have its own version of that story.

“My hope is simple: years from now, when people across America think about Greek ice cream, they’ll know it isn’t just another style of frozen dessert,” he said. “They’ll recognize it as something distinctly Greek, something memorable, and something that makes them want to come back.”

150,652 Scoops Later

The first-year numbers suggest Americans were at least willing to try the idea.

According to figures supplied by Yala, its Georgetown shop welcomed 101,819 guests and served 150,652 scoops during its first year. The company created more than 85 flavors and participated in more than 75 events and collaborations.

The traction was visible from the start. The Pappas Post previously reported on lines stretching down the block after Yala opened in Georgetown.

Yala also began attracting partners well beyond the world of independent neighborhood food businesses.

The company has worked with Levain Bakery and Georgetown Cupcake and expanded through a pop-up inside the Conrad Washington, D.C. Its broader list of partnerships and events has included major hospitality and cultural names including the Willard InterContinental, Monumental Sports & Entertainment and Wolf Trap.

The Levain collaboration paired the bakery’s famous cookies with Yala ice cream in a limited summer menu.

At the Conrad, meanwhile, Yala’s arrival became something more than a hotel food opening.

Members of the Byzantio Dance Troupe filled the lobby with traditional Greek dancing as Yala introduced a flavor created around America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Called Pursuit of Happiness, the Greek yogurt ice cream was swirled with blueberry and strawberry preserves, fresh lemon zest and honey.

For Kefalas, the flavor carried a message that went directly to the heart of the Greek-American experience: immigrants bring traditions with them, but those traditions do not remain frozen in time. In America, they meet other influences and become something new.

That idea could just as easily describe Yala itself.

“We’re building an American company inspired by Greece,” Kefalas said, “creating jobs here while sharing the very best of Greek hospitality, culture and food with our guests.”

Putting the Greekness Front and Center

For generations, Greek immigrants found their footing in America through food.

They opened diners, restaurants, luncheonettes, candy shops, bakeries and coffee houses from New York and Chicago to small towns across the country.

Often, the strategy was adaptation.

Serve what Americans already wanted. Make it well. Work impossibly hard. Build a business. Educate the children. Create a life.

The newest generation of Greek-American entrepreneurs sometimes has the luxury — and the confidence — to reverse that formula.

Instead of disguising the Greekness of a product in order to make it more American, they can make the Greekness the selling point.

That is what Yala is attempting.

The company talks openly about philoxenia and philotimo. Greek ingredients are not tucked away in the fine print. Greek names remain on the menu. The company’s origin story begins not with a focus group or marketing trend, but with Papou.

And the flavors move easily between Greece and America.

There are creations built around Greek yogurt, fruit preserves, honey and traditional ingredients alongside playful combinations designed for an American ice cream audience.

The message is not that one culture has to replace the other.

It is that the two can coexist in the same scoop.

And Now, Back to Baltimore

That makes Yala’s latest chapter especially fitting.

After building its first audience in Washington, the company is returning to Maryland through the place where Kefalas learned hospitality long before he became an entrepreneur himself.

At the Maryland State Fair, Yala will serve four signature flavors alongside Costas Inn: Mornings with Thea, Yamas, American Nike Cookie and Choco Yala.

For Maryland customers, it will be a first chance to taste a brand that has spent the past year building a following about an hour down the road.

For Kefalas, the geography means something more.

Before Georgetown, before the partnerships and before 150,652 scoops, there was a young Greek-American kid greeting customers at Costas Inn and watching the adults around him turn hospitality into a way of life.

There was also Papou, carrying his own version of Greece into America and passing down lessons that would survive long after him.

Now his grandson is trying to do something distinctly of his generation: take those inherited values, turn them into a modern American brand and introduce another piece of Greece to people who may not even know they have been missing it.

The Maryland State Fair appearance will last only a few weeks.

The more interesting question is what comes after.

Can Greek ice cream really follow Greek yogurt into the American mainstream?

Kefalas certainly thinks so.

And after more than 150,000 scoops, America appears willing to keep tasting.

Learn more about Yala Greek Ice Cream on its website, and follow the company on Instagram and Facebook.