The reaction we get from people about making Mrs.

T's has been so positive, we've been so blessed.

And I realized that's the juice.

When people smile when they find out you work at Mrs.

T's.

So my mission translated into I want people to smile when they hear our name.

The pierogi is a Polish dumpling.

We are doing about two and a half million pierogis a day.

When somebody comes in the plant and they see that first image of the cold water tub exit when the pierogis are coming out, it's always, that's a lot of pierogis.

We are the largest manufacturer of rows of pierogis in the country.

Since we are a nationwide brand, people think, oh, you must be established all over the country.

No, this is our only production facility in little Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

Why are you not in some industrial park somewhere?

But it does give me a great sense of pride, just the fact of being in a small town which eventually went to a national brand.

What we did is we grew row home by row home, building by building.

That was it.

It's home.

My dad is the founder.

He is the man behind Mrs.

T's.

And it was his mother's recipe.

So my grandmother, Mary, it was her recipe that he started the business with.

He created something from nothing.

There was no pierogi category.

I think people thought he was crazy, but he had a dream and a vision.

I mean, you got a degree at Notre Dame, you had a good job at one of the big eight accounting firms, and you quit to come back home and make pierogis.

It started with those five original chefs hand - making the pierogis, but it's grown into that system of our manufacturing process like it is today.

So really we start with our ingredients.

We make our filling and our dough.

We take 40-pound bags of potato flakes, dumping into our system, sift the product, and it goes eventually to our filling mixers where we make the batches of filling.

Add the potatoes, add water, oil, and spices.

So we take large pieces of dough and make them into more manageable pieces, maybe size of bricks, that the operators are able to handle.

Then it goes on to our forming area, and that's where the magic happens, where the pierogis are formed.

Dough is added to the machine, dough is extruded, rolled into a thin sheet, pockets made, filling is added, then they're crimped, sealed, and into the blancher.

They go through a blancher, and they're heated.

Not ready to eat, but they're blanched.

And we have to quickly chill it down to roughly 80 degrees or cooler before entering the freezer to make sure that the product freezes correctly before it exits the freezer.

Looking for any kind of defects, we want the perfect pierogi to exit the facility.

An 18-minute trip through the freezer to become fully frozen.

Following the freezer, it enters this scale area.

The scales will weigh out, depending on what product we're running, will weigh out the proper amount, and we're looking for product weight and count.

Then they go through metal detector and check wear before they enter the case packer.

Case packer will put them in the finished cases, and then they're stacked on the final pallet, and they're stretch wrapped and then placed into the storage freezer.

Yes, we're nationally recognized, but we haven't forgotten where we came from and where everything started.

And I think that's why we want to stay where we are and be able to continually support our community.

We do things like the Yingling Lager Jogger.

We offer reduced product for non-profit events and organizations.

It's a food of love in our culture, in our area.

It is served and shared and given for every experience from birth to death.

So it really is a cultural, emotional bond.

It brings your family and your community together.

And you have these people that go to their churches or they just gather in general to create pierogies for different fundraisers.

And I feel like that's part of what makes them so deliciously authentic, is because it's bringing different people together.

We had received some correspondence from a consumer, and their child was suffering from a rare form of a food allergy.

And our pierogies, one of the particular flavors, was one of the few things they could eat.

And I made a copy of it, made sure we shared it with everybody to understand this is why we do what we do.

And the way we do it.

The definition of success is not just more.