Hearth Bakery is opening a European-style patisserie in Highland on Thursday at noon, moving its afternoon and evening dessert program into the storefront at 3621 W. 32nd Ave. that spent 20 years as Happy Bakeshop. The new shop, called Hearth Patisserie, will be led by pastry chef Kevin McCormick, who spent 20 years working in kitchens including Per Se in New York City and Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder before landing in Denver.
According to Westword, Hearth Patisserie will serve French-inspired classics and elaborate individual desserts, including chouquettes, coconut lime tarts, a Paris-Brest filled with hazelnut praline, mousseline and pralinettes, and gâteaux, cakes, flans, brownies and tiramisu. The shop will also offer tarts with strawberry, almond and mascarpone cream fillings. Hearth Patisserie is set to run Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., extending the Hearth brand's hours deeper into the day than its bakery locations typically operate.
A Storefront With Two Decades of Neighborhood History
The 3621 W. 32nd Ave. address is well known to longtime Highland residents. The space had housed Happy Bakeshop, which opened in 2006 as Happy Cakes and became a neighborhood fixture before closing this shuttered after 20 years in May due to personal circumstances, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage. That closure opened the door for Hearth to expand right into the block where it already had a foothold.
Next door at 3617 W. 32nd Ave., Hearth had already established its Highland bakery in 2025, in a storefront that spent a decade as a Novo Coffee before that chain closed in January 2025 due to rising rent, as reported by Denver Westword. The back-to-back turnover on the block means Hearth now effectively occupies two adjacent storefronts on the same stretch of 32nd Avenue, pairing its neighborhood bakery and coffee shop model with a dedicated pastry shop next door.
McCormick Brings a High-End Pastry Résumé
Before joining Hearth, McCormick was named Culinary Director at Denver Union Station in January 2025, where he launched Baumé — A Dessert Bar inside the Great Hall the following month, featuring European-style patisseries and Champagne, per Mile High CRE. He ran the pastry program at Baumé before moving on to lead Hearth Patisserie. His résumé also includes stints at L2O and Good Ambler in Chicago, the latter of which was named Best New Bakery by Chicago Magazine after its 2020 launch, also according to Mile High CRE.
McCormick's arrival signals a deliberate strategic shift for Hearth, moving beyond morning bakery service into full afternoon and evening dessert hospitality. The Highland patisserie is not a stand-alone concept so much as an extension of a brand that has been rapidly building out across the city.
From Farmers' Market Pop-Up to Four Denver Locations
Hearth began as a wholesale operation and pop-up, getting its footing at the Highlands farmers' market before founder Matt Quinlisk opened its first permanent location in RiNo in 2022. Quinlisk trained at a San Francisco baking school and served as pastry chef at Moxie Bread Co. in Louisville, Colorado, under the late baker Andy Clark, a 2018 James Beard Award semifinalist, according to Denver Westword's earlier reporting. That grain-focused lineage still shows in Hearth's bread and pastry programs, which rely on locally milled flours and classic croissants made through a multi-day process using French butter — the almond croissant in particular has become a customer favorite.
Hearth's Uptown location opened in November 2024 at 1300 E. 17th Ave., a space that previously housed Denver Bicycle Cafe from 2011 to 2019 and Alpine Dog Brewing Company from February 2023 to March 2024. Hearth opened its Highland and Littleton locations in 2025, expanding beyond Denver for the first time when it executed a five-year lease that July for a 1,375-square-foot retail space in Downtown Littleton, according to Kaufman Hagan Commercial Real Estate. With the Highland patisserie now open, Hearth has locations in RiNo, Uptown, Highland and Littleton.
Quinlisk has said the growth was not entirely by design. “I did not intend to have a bunch of coffee shops,” he said in a 2025 interview. He has also taken on a leadership role within Denver's professional baking community, becoming one of six founding board members of the 5280 Pastry Co-Op in August 2023, an organization established to foster networking and mentorship among Mile High pastry chefs, per Westword.
A Bakery Built on Cross-Pollination
Hearth's Uptown location also hosts After School Pizza, a sourdough slice pop-up that operates through a secret wall window and uses the same naturally leavened sourdough starter as Hearth's bread loaves, as Hoodline detailed in a recent report. It is a small example of how the bakery cross-utilizes its baking production across different concepts under one roof, a pattern likely to continue as Hearth Patisserie settles into its Highland home. The regional grain movement that shaped Quinlisk's approach has also gained wider recognition locally — the third annual Denver Bake Fest in October 2025 introduced a heritage sourdough category spotlighting baked goods made with Colorado-grown grains, reflecting a trend championed by bakeries like Hearth, according to Westword's coverage of the event.
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