LYNN, Mass — Two sisters in Lynn are honoring their grandfather’s legacy, bringing his family recipe to dinner tables across the northeast—and beyond. They dug deep into their family’s old recipe books and have grown their pierogi business from farmer’s markets—to grocery stores in half the country.
“No canola oil in here,” said Vanessa White, as she started to make the pierogi dough.
Growing up, Vanessa worked at her Dziadziu’s store in western Mass, helping make pierogis on Saturdays.
“My sister and I definitely we have our family’s genes and that we are workaholics,” said Vanessa White. “We love working.”
Vanessa and Casey White say being Polish, they always had pierogis in their freezer. When they moved to the Boston-area for college, they shared their family staple.
“Our first boyfriends, our roommates, like we would just indoctrinate them to this pierogi thing, like, oh, you don’t know if these are these throw them in the pan,” said Vanessa.
“So we started thinking, hmm, maybe there’s an opportunity here because we’re in Boston and we knew that there are three stores in South Boston that made pierogi, but they didn’t really have an intention of going past servicing the community,” said Casey.
So Vanessa and Casey dug up their Dziadziu’s recipe.
“Our grandfather’s recipe was like, it would be like six handfuls of salt,” said Vanessa. “And you’d be like, whose handfuls of salt were those?”
The sisters said it took a lot of trial and error before they perfected his pierogis. They would bring their pierogis to farmers markets and would sell out within an hour.
“So we were quickly realizing that like, okay, it’s becoming too much to be part time, but maybe not enough to be full time,” said Casey. “But we still kind of like had to make a decision because we’re getting bigger.”
When Vanessa and Casey first started out, they were making about 500 per week by hand, selling them at farmers markets. Fast forward to today where they’re making about 140,000 pierogi and they are now sold in grocery stores in about half the country.
“Our demand to stores skyrocketed during covid and it taught us how to scale,” said Vanessa.
The sisters went from making them by hand in Lynn, to now a much larger facility in Hingham since their pierogis are now sold in 1500 stores.
“They boil for about 45 seconds,” Casey explained as she cooked.
Using whole ingredients, the sisters have branched out from the traditional flavors—but they stayed true to their roots by naming the company Jaju’s Pieorgi—after their inspiration.
“I think that what we are doing personally, like this is the biggest kind of gift we could give our family,” said Vanessa. “I mean, we’re sharing that legacy for hopefully generations with people all around the country.”
“I think he would definitely be proud,” said Casey.
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