Burch’s Pastry Chef Joins Penny’s Coffee As the Company Plots Third Location

Come January, visitors to Penny’s Linden Hills location will be able to enjoy pastries whipped up by the former pastry chef at Burch, Shawn McKenzie. The kitchen will include large glass windows that allow guests to watch the pastry crew work, reports the Star Tribune. Additionally, a new bakery space is currently under construction in Wayzata.

McKenzie—whose work is influenced by time she’s spent in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—will be tweaking the coffee shop chain’s existing menu in addition to crafting pastries, breads, and other sweets of her own.

Penny’s next stop will open in early 2019. The 70-seat suburban outpost will be created by James Dayton Design of Minneapolis. Yet, Penny’s CEO Ben Hertz doesn’t plan on stopping there.

“We’re going to take the bull by the horns, and open a lot of cafes,” Hertz told the Strib. “The goal is to provide markets that lack great coffee with better experiences than Starbucks, and with less pretense than you find in the third-wave coffee world,” he said, adding that he has “no doubt that we can build a hundred of these cafes, and that’s what we intend to do.”

• Powerhouse Taste Team Behind Forthcoming Penny’s Coffee Shops [ETC]
• The Essential Coffee Shops of the Twin Cities [ETC]
• 15 Outstanding Bakeries in the Twin Cities [ETC]