About Pieroguys

Growing up in a mostly Italian family, I learned to love food at an early age – the smell, the look, the taste and the feel.  By age five, I had an interest in cooking and baking.  I can remember one year at Christmas time, being at my Nani’s house with the ladies of the family baking cookies.  I grew to love the mechanics and construction involved with cooking and developed a passion for the food I was making.

So how did I get into the pierogi business?

My first foray into the Midwest came in the fall of 2001 when I starting attending the University of Kansas.  I was a transfer student from Keystone College in Laplume, PA, and had a hard time deciding on a major.  I had a vague idea of the career I wanted, but soon after arriving to KU, my life changed.

Coming from the small town of Carbondale, PA, to Lawrence, KS posed a major culture shock for me.  I have traveled around from here to there – Chicago, New York, Orlando – but it was actually living in a new place permanently that created this sense of community and caring.  This wasn’t vacation, this was my new home.

Before college, I always wanted to be my own boss, own my own business, and be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  After starting college, this was the furthest thought from my mind.  I was worried about becoming the typical college kid, getting a degree, and wearing a suit and tie every day for the rest of my life.  As I soaked up the Midwest and settled into college life, my entrepreneurial thoughts slowly re-emerged.

One night out in Lawrence, the crew and I got hungry and got locked in a discussion of culinary options.  After some talk, I gave my opinion and said, “I want some pierogies.”  I was looked at as if I had said something in a foreign language.  Nobody had a clue what I was talking about.

It’s funny because people in Kansas and all around the country and the world know the word spaghetti, but only 1-in-100 knows the word pierogi.  A pierogi is a Polish dumpling, but most of the people I know who make pierogies are Italian.  Pierogies are very popular on the East Coast and pretty much a household staple.  While Lawrence is known for its diversity and array of ethnic foods, apparently pierogies were non-existent.

I soon found out that this was not just an instance in Lawrence, KS, between college kids, but that the majority of people throughout the Midwest had never even heard of a pierogi.  So, I got to thinking that this could be a new delicacy introduced into the local dining scene.  I had a strong instinct that, one day, I would introduce Lawrence, KS, to the pierogi.

I spent two years there and had the time of my life!  I started to stray away from my purpose there, which was school, and ended up back in Carbondale to get my thoughts together and figure out my direction in life. On a short visit back to the college town in 2006, I decided that it was time to make my idea a reality.  In a matter of weeks, I was packed and driving across the country back to my old “Larryville” stomping grounds.

Hitting town, I felt happy and excited – it felt right.  I went to work on my plan and soon had “Pieroguys Pierogies.”  I always wanted to be the king of something and couldn’t help but think that maybe I could be the “pierogi king.”  At this moment, I realized that I wasn’t a suit-and-tie guy after all – I was a Pieroguy.   

I spent the first 18 years of my life in the small southern town of Victoria, Texas. Living there only because of work, I was the youngest child in a family of Kansas immigrants. Spending every summer and Christmas visiting relatives across the state of Kansas instilled a sense of love for the area in me, and when my family decided to move to the East coast, I decided to try my hand at life in Kansas.

I moved to Lawrence in 2001 and enrolled in the University of Kansas, the alma mater of both of my parents. Five years of great times, interesting classes and fantastic memories later, I graduated with a degree in psychology, but really no idea what career I wanted to pursue. It was then that I traveled east to Philadelphia for a visit with my parents, and a revelation struck me which changed my entire plans for the future.

While watching a KU football game with the local alumni association at a popular area sports bar, I was struck by the frequent ordering of a very curious sounding item: pierogies. Having never ever heard of these things, I asked the waitress to explain. Needless to say, after her explanation and three plates of the delicious dumplings I was hooked.

A few days later, meeting with a friend I had met in the dormitories, we began to discuss businesses that might be successful in Lawrence, where he was about to return after a stint in the military. Almost immediately after our platter of pierogies arrived, we were both struck instantaneously with the exact same idea.

Since we both lived in Lawrence for several years, and both loved good food, we decided to bring pierogies for the first time to the heart of the Midwest. As frequent visitors to the Lawrence night scene, we were both struck by the lack of variety when it came to late-night foods. Using the prevalence of pierogies on the East coast as a model, we hope to make them a culinary delicacy here as well, making them available to everyone, not just bar patrons.

Though pierogies are well known as a late-night social food, they are a very traditional staple food of many cultures and can be used in the creation of a wide variety of meals.

Basically, after all the years of school and work, we have decided that we are not suit and tie kind of guys. We are chef hats and aprons kind of guys. Pieroguys.