Inside the Mount Dora Marketplace, where shoppers drift between small storefronts and food stalls, Sweet Bites has quickly become a stop people talk about long after they’ve been there—mainly about going back for seconds.

It usually starts with the strawberries.

Chocolate-coated, piled high and finished with a glossy drizzle, the shop’s Dubai strawberry cups have turned into the thing customers come looking for, and the thing they bring friends back for.

For co-owner Patricia Khabbaz, the idea wasn’t part of some long-range plan. It started as a weekend experiment.

“I just did it for fun,” Patricia says. “I majored in psychology at University of Central Florida, worked at doctor offices at Lakeview. I wasn’t a part of a bakery or anything but I would help my parents do the marketing for their business (Beirut Bites).”

“After a while, I was like, let’s just do the sweets for fun on weekends.”

That “fun” didn’t stay small for long.

“I wouldn’t stop selling out,” she says. “Ever since I started in October till this day, we keep getting orders for everything Dubai Chocolate, they don’t stop. People really, really love it.”

The chocolate behind those viral cups is what sets Sweet Bites apart. Known as Dubai chocolate, it’s made in-house using pistachio cream blended with crispy filo dough, creating a rich filling with a crunch that shows up across the menu on the ever-popular fresh strawberry cups and more. 

“It’s pistachio with crispy filo dough, and it’s amazing” Patricia says. “We put that on our cookies, brownies, cheesecake, our strawberry cups, our cinnamon rolls, our croissants.”

Despite the name, she’s quick to explain it’s not imported and for those who don’t like pistachio, they have a ‘just chocolate’ edition. 

“We have something for everyone, and everything is so good,” she says.

The shop also leans into what people are already excited about online; what’s trending, adding desserts that feel as visual as they are edible. One of the newest additions: fruit-shaped cakes that look almost too real to cut into.

“We added fruitcakes,” Patricia says, explaining that they have a bakery in Orlando they work with who provides the viral cakes. “They’re shaped into their fruit and filled inside it’s cake and mousse. And the crunch to it is white chocolate on the outer layer.”

Alongside the sweets, coffee has quietly become another draw. The menu includes the usual lineup of Americanos, lattes and iced drinks, but also something less familiar to many customers: Lebanese coffee.

Served in small cups, it’s thicker, stronger, intentionally unfiltered and with a hint of cardamom.

“Lebanese coffee has more of like a muddy texture and it’s very strong and bold,” Patricia says. “It’s very similar to Turkish coffee with grains at the end.”

In Lebanon, she says, the ritual doesn’t always end with the last sip.

“After you finish the cup, you’ll see the residue of the mud. People flip the cup and let it sit for like 10 minutes and a fortune lady sits there and reads the cup for the future.”

However, they don’t offer that part. Just the tasty chocolate.

Sweet Bites is very much a family story, too. Patricia’s parents, longtime names behind Beirut Bites, helped shape the foundation. Her mother handles much of the prep, her father and brothers help serve customers, while Patricia handles marketing and social media.

“It’s like a whole family thing,” she says.

As for Sweet Bites, the shop itself grew out of pop-ups and farmers markets, where Patricia tested the concept and built a following before moving into a permanent space in the Mount Dora Marketplace in late 2025.

Helping along the way was co-owner Hannah Dilday, who met Patricia through her fiancé Brandon and quickly became part of the business.

“I started up helping Patricia do the strawberry cups and chocolate bars, then we both fell in love working with each other, so we opened up the shop,” Hannah says.

Hanah, who comes from a family of eight and studied at Lake-Sumter State College for nursing, says the shift into business ownership wasn’t something she saw coming.

“We never thought this would have happened, but I love being an entrepreneur,” she says.

That sense of surprise  and momentum still shows up in how the shop runs day to day. What began as a limited schedule has already expanded to meet demand, with more days and longer hours added as lines grew.

Inside the space, there’s no formal dining setup, something first-time visitors sometimes don’t expect. Instead, customers order at the counter and find seats on a shared patio out back, part of the marketplace’s open, communal layout or on the few bar stools in front of the shop’s counters.

And then they stay.

“Sometimes, this is our very own therapy bar,” Patricia says. “That’s what we call it.”

Between regulars, tourists and first-timers who found the shop through social media or weekend markets, the conversations can stretch just as long as the lines.

That connection, along with desserts that are as much about texture and flavor as they are about what people see on their screens, is what’s keeping Sweet Bites busy.

And if the steady stream of customers is any indication, word is still spreading.

“It doesn’t feel like work,” Hannah says. “We love working with each other. We love the community so much.”

Sweet Bites, at 100 E 4th Ave., is open Tuesday through Sunday, with online ordering and delivery available through DoorDash. Visit @sweetbitesbybeirutbites on Instagram or call 352.308.7550 for more information.

Photos by Roxanne Brown