Take a bite and let it melt: Vampire Penguin will soon arrive in downtown Rock Hill
Dessert franchise Vampire Penguin is slated to open in downtown Rock Hill at the end of this summer, offering icy shaved snow treats in flavors like Mexican Candy, Thai Tea Snow and Halo Halo.
Vampire Penguin’s shaved “snow” desserts — its calling card — are made by adding flavoring into water before freezing it into discs. Those icy discs are then shaved, giving the dessert a texture of fine snow.
When it opens, the Rock Hill location will offer signature recipes like strawberry cheesecake snow and peanut butter cup snow, along with internationally-inspired flavors.
The flavor capabilities are endless, said Carolyn Kutz, who co-owns the Rock Hill restaurant with her husband. She expects the grand opening to be around late August.
“I’m excited to bring this product to the people of Rock Hill and expand into York,” Kutz said. “It’s such a fun and unique product, but it’s something where there are sugar-free options, there are vegan options. We can make desserts that are dairy- and gluten-free. This is really something that everyone can enjoy.”
The store will also sell water and canned soda to drink.
Kutz said the idea to open the store came about when she and her husband went last fall to visit their son Jayden Hendriksma, a freshman at USC Aiken. He was excited to introduce his parents to Vampire Penguin, assuring them it was unlike anything they had ever experienced.
“We were like, OK, we’ll try anything once,” Kutz said. “And we went to the shop, and it was such a unique experience, and the product was so different than anything else we’d ever had. We just fell in love with it.”
In fact, they fell in love with it so much that when evaluating what Kutz wanted to do once she was done with her long career in retail data analysis, Kutz looked into franchising opportunities with Vampire Penguin.
The East Main Street location was chosen due to the high amount of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Kutz said she’ll be working both jobs for the foreseeable future but likes the prospect of being her own boss and working with a product that she loves.
Vampire Penguin
Location: 212 E. Main Street, Rock Hill, SC, United States, South Carolina
Cuisine: Shaved snow, dessert
