Dessert parlour Sweet Surprise to open in Dalkeith offering waffles, crepes and ice cream

Jarnac Court dessert shop set to open its doors

A colourful new dessert parlour is due to open its doors on Monday, with sweet treats such as waffles, crepes and slushies on the menu.

Sweet Surprise at Jarnac Court in Dalkeith town centre is the brainchild of Michelle Niven and her partner Paddy Sweeney. The colourfully decorated shop in the former Subway unit has 12 staff members ready to serve customers when it opens to the public on Monday.

Michelle said: “It’s coming along nicely. We are planning on having the grand opening on Monday. We have been doing training and the staff are now up to date and ready to go. We are nervous and excited, but ready. We have discussed this over the last year or so and put it into planning at the start of this year. My partner works in construction so he knew what to do. It was just a shell before. He ripped it out and did it up in four or five weeks. It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

Sweet Surprise at Jarnac Court in Dalkeith is due to open on Monday.

"We have made it as bright and colourful as possible. We hope that will make it popular. It’s something that Midlothian is lacking. We just wanted to bring something different to the community. We have got three kids of our own and we are constantly in this kind of dessert shop in Edinburgh and we thought Dalkeith needed something like this for families to go to. So we are hoping people of all ages come from all over to our little diner and have a nice Sweet Surprise.”

Michelle hopes Sweet Surprise will become a must-visit destination for families, with a kids’ zone providing a space for children to play video games and socialise.

She said: "I think the demand is there. The shop is in the best location, people are always walking about in Dalkeith town centre. We are going for the American diner experience, with a kids zone featuring a Playstation, so it’s somewhere they can go to have fun. If you go with your kids and friends then you can still have a chat with your friends while kids play. And older people have been getting excited about it, reminiscing about the old ice cream parlours and diners they used to go to.

"My partner owns the Buccleuch across the road and another pub. This is our first venture in the dessert business. It’s really the first thing I can get stuck into. We’ll see how it goes to start with, we need to suss out when the busy times are for example, then we could maybe get more staff. Hopefully we can bring in the right people and bring the community together. And maybe going forward if this is successful we could start a franchise with shops across Scotland.”