He lives to eat and sell ‘real’ fro-yo

As an intern at an investment banking firm, Dan Kim lived every poor college student’s dream: takeout meals delivered to his office every day, and on the company dime.

“I just started eating everything,” he recalls, “and forgot about my whole health plan.”

In three months, he gained 25 pounds. It was a lot for a 5-foot-10-inch former high school athlete -- so much that his then-girlfriend, living in another city, didn’t recognize him.

Kim shed the weight and never looked back. Now a self-described health nut, he took his fixation with eating right and focused it on Red Mango, a frozen-yogurt chain founded in his native South Korea.

“Consumer appetite is shifting more toward healthier eating, but there’s always going to be that craving for indulging,” says Kim, Red Mango’s North America president and chief executive. “This is a great opportunity to intersect that healthy market with that indulgence market.”

Kim loves yogurt. His interests include photography, fashion and music. He has two gym memberships and works out three or four times a week, and he enjoys the occasional facial. But most of all, he loves yogurt -- eating it, selling it, even reading about it.

“He’s obsessed with yogurt,” says movie producer and Red Mango investor Roy Lee, whose “The Departed” won the Oscar for best picture last year. “Seriously, it’s all he talks about.”

And Kim maintains that his version of the frozen, creamy, tangy dessert is the only real thing in a saturated market that includes Pinkberry, Kiwiberri, Yogurberry and Diet Berry 44.

At other chains, “you’re basically eating milk with sugar and water,” Kim says, whereas Red Mango is packed with live and active bacterial cultures. He has the certificate to prove it: The National Yogurt Assn. recently bestowed on Red Mango yogurt its Live & Active Cultures seal, signifying that it meets the organization’s frozen-yogurt standard of 10 million cultures per gram at the time of manufacture.

Red Mango, with zero grams of fat and 90 calories per serving, has 400 million cultures per gram, Kim says.

“People should know what they’re eating,” he says, noting that some chains use a powder base or won’t disclose their ingredients. At Red Mango, “everything we do is about health and authenticity.”

“Stop focusing on who has the best toppings or flavors,” he says. “Just focus on the simplicity of yogurt.”

Kim has splashed reminders of his product’s “natural goodness” throughout the chain’s stores. Declares one poster: “Red Mango is authentic yogurt, frozen to perfection. . . . Once you’ve tasted the real thing, you’ll never go back.”

Molly Richardson never has. “I’ve tried others, but I just come to Red Mango,” says Richardson, who frequents the Red Mango in Westwood -- the first U.S. store, which opened in July -- and enjoys the original topped with bananas and graham cracker crumbs, which sells for $4.75 for a medium size.

An eating-disorder therapist, Richardson says she’s “conscious of getting as much nutritional-value bang” as possible from her food. She and husband Erick walk to Red Mango a few times a week with their two Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Kiwi and Coconut. “Our dogs love it too,” she says.

Kim, 31, immigrated from South Korea to the United States when he was 5 and grew up in Bellflower. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a business degree, he began a career as an investment banker.

The demanding hours and stressful lifestyle didn’t suit him, and after working for a few start-up companies, Kim was approached in 2006 by some former colleagues to bring Red Mango to America. He agreed but insisted on developing his own “real” yogurt recipe. That took six months, 10,000 gallons of mix and 50 test batches in an Oregon lab.

Now there are 18 U.S. Red Mango locations, including in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and New York. The chain, whose U.S. headquarters is in Sherman Oaks, plans to open 30 more stores by the end of the year. Kim’s ultimate goal is for 500 locations over the next five years -- or, as he puts it, to do for yogurt what Starbucks did for coffee.

“Dan Kim is a total dynamo,” says Michael Seibert, whose venture capital firm, Stone Canyon Venture Partners, is an investor in Red Mango. “He’s constantly moving, pulling it together.”

Kim’s devotion to his product has won over celebrity fans -- including actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who has a Red Mango machine in his office and in his house -- and high-profile investors.

“His excitement about yogurt is infectious,” says “Survivor” winner and Red Mango investor Yul Kwon, who is working with Kim to open locations in Northern California.

Beyond yogurt, Kim is happy to offer other health tips. He’s got recommendations for eating well (soy, lentils and kimchi are must-haves), working out (combine weight training and cardio for the best results) and the best way to boil an egg (the key is to start the eggs in cold water and turn the heat off once the water begins to boil, leaving the eggs submerged for a few minutes to finish cooking).

Kim watches his diet -- rarely eating desserts and fried foods, and limiting his intake of carbohydrates and red meat -- consuming 1,600 to 2,000 calories a day. One of his favorite foods is steamed cauliflower beaten to the consistency of mashed potatoes.

And he eats a medium-sized helping of Red Mango yogurt almost every day, topped with pineapple and coconut.

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andrea.chang@latimes.com

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Live and active

Who: Dan Kim

Age: 31

Job: North America president and CEO of Red Mango

Education: Bachelor’s in business, UC Berkeley

Residence: Studio City

Family: Married, with two dogs

Bedside reading: Men’s Health magazine, “The Origin of Brands,” by Al and Laura Ries

Favorite movies: “Karate Kid,” “Love Actually,” “Jerry Maguire”

Diet: Low-fat cottage cheese, sushi, nuts, fish, yogurt