Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1322707
89 Vanessa and Casey White opened Jaju Pierogi in Lynn in 2015. in Vanessa and Casey White's childhood home was always stocked with pierogi. eir grandfather owned a Polish deli and they grew up in a family that took pride in its Polish heritage. So having the savory dumplings always on hand was just the way things were. en the two girls left home, heading to college in the Boston area—Vanessa to Tufts University, Casey a few years later to Bentley University—and discovered that their staple food was not so common among their classmates, many of whom were intrigued by the Whites' pierogi. "We were confused," Casey says. "We just thought it was completely normal," Vanessa adds. is revelation got the sisters thinking there might be a market for a handmade pierogi company in the area. And that initial brainstorm eventually turned into the foundation of Jaju Pierogi, a growing, acclaimed company that now turns out 25,000 filled dumplings a week, for distribution to about 150 stores throughout the Northeast. "I don't think we would ever have envisioned it would become what it has," Vanessa says. e pair first decided to test out the business idea in 2015. Both had graduated college and joined the corporate world. Vanessa, who studied international relations, was working in operations for a start-up company, and Casey had a position at a consulting firm. But the concept of a pierogi business never quite disappeared, so one day they headed to their grandfather's deli, now run by one of their uncles, and dug up his old, handwritten TWO SISTERS TURN THEIR LOVE OF A TRADITIONAL EASTERN EUROPEAN DUMPLING INTO JAJU PIEROGI IN LYNN. BY SARAH SHEMKUS PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN GILBERT POLISH STYLE THE FREEZER