Wandering in the dessert

Photo: Deb DeKoff // Neighbors of the Wasatch Back.

On the evening of August 9, 2022, Shelley Marshall and Joe Davis were married at the Cardiovascular Center at University of Utah Hospital. Joe was scheduled for open heart surgery the next morning. The couple already shared a home and a family, each bringing two kids from their previous marriages. They had also cofounded Park City Desserts & Coffee, a Main Street establishment known for its delicious tarts and dominance in dietary-restriction bingo. 

Reiki master Shelly Morehead, a close friend of the couple, led the hospital room marriage. “She did some sound bowls and all the things,” Shelley Marshall recalls as we sip coffee in front of the fireplace at PC Desserts. 

The next day, the surgeons opened Joe to fix his mitral valve. A month later, he left the hospital, and days after that, PC Desserts received an eviction notice at its Main Street shop, at today’s Kemo Sabe building. “Yeah, it wasn’t great timing,” says Shelley, in the understatement of the century. “They gave us two weeks.” 

Shelley has chosen to build businesses in a notoriously hard industry. She doesn’t give herself nearly enough credit for the ways she adapts, evolves, and reinvents. 

Today, PC Desserts has a permanent location at 401 Main Street, and, since 2003, Shelley and Joe have owned Hugo Coffee Shop in the Park City Visitor Center. Coming this summer, they have another shop opening in the Commons at Wasatch Springs. 

To understand why Shelley is willing to persevere for healthy desserts and good community, we’ll have to take a step back to Vietnam. 

In 1972, Sergeant Frank Marshall retired from the U.S. Army after fighting in Vietnam, where he earned the Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor in combat. He had been exposed to Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant that the U.S. military used to deny the enemy cover. Many victims of Agent Orange fought cancer throughout their lives, as Frank did, and many of their children suffered health challenges.

His daughter Shelley and her brother Zachary, 10 years younger, thankfully were born healthy. They grew up between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Nova Scotia, where their mom, Debra, was born and raised. Although Frank was a homebody, Debra ensured her kids saw live theater and music. That’s how Shelley discovered figure skating, which, she says, “was my life from the time I was 14 until 30.”

Shelley’s drive to perform on the ice, coupled with her awareness of Agent Orange, led her to immerse in all things health. What goes into a PC Desserts treat, and what doesn’t, starts from that legacy.   

In 2001, Shelley, fresh out of nursing school, moved out to Salt Lake City—mostly because the 2002 Winter Olympic Games were coming. “I just wanted to be here. I didn’t even know in what capacity,” she says.

She landed a job at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City and rebuilt her side gig teaching skating. She also auditioned to skate in the opening ceremonies for the Paralympic Games. Her team of 20 skaters performed to live music by Wynonna Judd and Stevie Wonder in front of 40,000 people.  

Soon, Shelley met her now-former husband and became a mom. Ava, her oldest, was born in 2005, followed by AJ in 2008. They reinforced Shelley’s interest in health. She began to research toxins, going “into the rabbit hole of what’s in our lotion and what’s in our food,” as she puts it. 

Shelley met other moms on that journey. Their group, Mom-Ease, met at the Sugar House library and exchanged information on what products to get and where to find them. That led Shelley to make her own baby food, a skill she then taught through the University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning program. 

Meanwhile, one of Shelley’s ice-skating students at the SLC Sports Complex happened to be Cherise Udell, executive director of Utah Moms for Clean Air. She brought Shelley into the Utah environmental scene. Over homemade beers, Shelley and some friends came up with Sustain, a nonprofit that would support the whole ecosystem of green organizations. Launched in 2010, Sustain became known for the ReDirect Guide, a directory of eco businesses, groups, and events.

Running a 501(c)(3) was a lot. “At some point, it becomes very consuming,” Shelley admits. “It was hard to stay positive because you do all this work, and sometimes a random elected official comes in and wipes it all away.”

By 2013, Sustain had become a full-time, unpaid job, a luxury Shelley could no longer afford. She and her husband divorced, and she needed to generate income. 

Many people wander a proverbial desert before arriving at their promised land. For Shelley, that wandering came at the end of Sustain. “One of my downfalls, maybe, is that when I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough, and for better or worse, I will cut the cord,” she reflects. She stopped Sustain, stopped ice skating, and stopped teaching skating, “which was not, in retrospect, a great idea, because that was good money and something I loved deeply.” 

Shelley took a job managing a Sunglass Hut at The Gateway mall in Salt Lake City. “It was perfect,” she recalls. “I just wanted to do something light and frivolous.” 

The clock-in-clock-out job gave her time to think about everything else, starting with where to live. Ever since moving to Utah, Shelley had wanted to be in Park City. “So, one day, I was like, what am I doing? I mean, if I want this, why am I waiting?” Shelley, Ava, and AJ moved into a Park City rental unit in 2013.

The move marked a new phase of life for Shelley, leading her to a job as development director of the People’s Health Clinic. That opened the door for her to join Leadership Park City, a government program to train community leaders. “That was very transformative for me,” she says. “It brought me home.” 

Although the People’s Health Clinic wasn’t a fit for Shelley in the end, it introduced her to Joe Davis. He worked for Park City Television as the morning host, and she regularly appeared on his show to announce new programs. One day before Halloween, in 2016, she was promoting a program to exchange candy for cash. She and Joe tried to chat during commercial breaks, but it was mayhem. A Mariachi band in full costume was about to go on.

“He comes out of the studio and says, ‘Make sure she gets my number’ to the director,” Shelley recounts, and she knew. They dated eventually—Shelley had insisted they keep it professional for a while—and began to build a life together.  

After leaving the People’s Health Clinic in 2017, Shelley picked up catering gigs while figuring out her next career. At the time, she was hanging out a lot in Park City Coffee Roaster, now home of The Bagel Den. “I couldn’t get out of there in under four hours,” she jokes. She routinely played board games with her “Grandpas” (regulars whom this writer hopes appreciate that endearing nickname). 

“So, the idea evolved into desserts,” she says. “Because I love desserts. I love coffee. But also, I was a nurse, a health coach, and into sustainability. Maybe I could come up with some great healthy desserts.”

Shelley began to develop recipes and cater events using a kitchen in the back of Park City Gift & Gourmet. She became the go-to for hard cases, explaining, “Chefs would call me and say, ‘Hey, this person’s vegan and gluten-free, and I don’t want to deal with this.’”

Her classics, including chia-seed parfaits, lemon tarts, and almond joy cake, were resonating. Business picked up, and Covid brought an unexpected influx of home delivery orders. 

By this point, Joe had left Park City Television to work in real estate for Berkshire Hathaway, which was remodeling an office at the Kemo Sabe building. Stoked Coffee Roasters, the building’s coffee shop tenant, closed. The manager knew about PC Desserts and invited Shelley and Joe to take the space. It was a gamble for both parties. No one knew when business would pick up again on Main Street. The manager offered to rent the space on a percentage basis, and it went smoothly for two years. 

Then Joe contracted Covid. “We were at dinner with his boss, and he just collapsed,” Shelley remembers. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. A year later came their marriage, as well as Joe’s successful surgery. In the interim, Shelley’s father passed from liver cancer—a consequence, the family believes, of Agent Orange.  

“Surviving and thriving are two different things,” Shelley reflects, describing the days when PC Desserts wandered from Kimball Junction to the Kemo Sabe building, then to Treasure Mountain Inn, after the ill-timed eviction. “But we had grown to the point where I was like, I need to know more about business. We’ve invested this much time, effort, drama, money. I don’t want to let this go.”

In 2023, she enrolled in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program and, through it, learned that Hugo Coffee Shop at the Park City Visitor Center was up for sale. Although PC Desserts needed a new home, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Soon after closing on Hugo in September 2023, another opportunity arose. La Niche, a gift shop on Main Street, came up for sale. PC Desserts bought it and opened in the new space in November 2024. 

“It was kind of like, boom, boom, boom,” Shelley emphasizes. Her entrepreneurial drive, pent up since the end of Sustain, was expressing itself again. 

PC Desserts is the kind of cozy you want on a brisk PC morning. It feels like a mountain-town living room with an espresso machine, a full bar, and a fireplace, plus a case of wholesome desserts. 

The “OG” at PC Desserts is the lemon tart, which, this correspondent can confirm, is delicious. The cashew cream base with almond coconut crust is dialed. The lemon, espresso fudge, and pumpkin tarts are not only tasty but also sneakily sustainable. “To set the cashew cream, you have to freeze it,” Shelley notes, so that means there’s no waste. 

Today is not an easy time to be in the desserts and coffee industry, but Shelley is committed. She’s wandered too far and overcome too much to not believe that she can navigate tariffs, staffing crunches, and everything else. Her love for healthy food, born from ice skating and her dad’s struggles with Agent Orange, keeps her focused on the wider mission, which is to change what we put in our bodies.

Shelley’s newest shop will open at the Commons at Wasatch Springs, just off the intersection of Highway 248 and Browns Canyon Road, in the summer of 2026. Until then, grab a tart on Main Street. You won’t regret it.