This summer, best friends Miranda Scott (Colgate University ’18) and Serena Bian (University of Pennsylvania ’18) decided to do something meaningful with their few months home, together in Michigan. They set out to create something that they were passionate about: food (breakfast especially). Combining their two loves, The Waffle Cookie was born one day when experimenting in the kitchen with a waffle press.
Equally delicious and charitable, The Waffle Cookie was established as a social enterprise. Serena and Miranda do this by applying business strategies to make a profit that also helps maximizes social impact in their community. As the slogan says “By Detroit. For Detroit,” the profits of Miranda and Serena’s company help fund projects of social impact in their area. The Waffle Cookie currently supports The Empowerment Plan, helping Detroit’s homeless by making winter coats that double as sleeping bags. This summer, Miranda and Serena had a chance to visit The Empowerment Plan and witness the employed homeless women that are being lifted out of poverty through their work with the non-profit. They also support the Start-up Effect, another local non-profit that aids underprivileged youth interested in entrepreneurship.
In the few months Serena and Miranda had together this summer, they brought The Waffle Cookie into stores and farmer’s markets in the Detroit area, sharing their message and the yummy waffle cookies with their hometown. With just a waffle iron and batter, Miranda and Serena travel around Detroit, intriguing their customers with their message and satisfying them with their product.
Not your average teenage start-up, The Waffle Cookie recently became an LLC, is patent pending, and has been featured on local news and radio shows. Most recently, The Waffle Cookie was offered a feature in Hour Detroit Magazine, a major lifestyle magazine in the Detroit area. They have recently hired three employees to continue baking at home in Michigan while they packed their waffle presses for college.
Miranda and Serena have capitalized on the current social media food craze that has been made famous by Instagram accounts such as, @foodintheair and @thenaughtyfork. The Waffle Cookie currently has close to 10,000 Instagram followers and hundreds of Facebook likes. And in just two months,The Waffle Cookie's gofundme page raised a total of $2,875 to help grow their business.
To keep up with The Waffle Cookie and the great work being accomplished:
www.thewafflecookie.org
