24 July 25 • 2019
jn

jews d
in 
the

Student Startup

Seaholm High School student starts waffl
 e 
company and helps support local business.

B

ubble waffles have become an 
international street-food craze, 
and now you can get them right 
down the street at the Birmingham 
Farmers Market thanks to Valarie 
Sherr of West Bloomfield, where she 
lives with her parents, Andrea and 
Roger Sherr. They attend Temple 
Israel.
Sherr, 15, is a student 
at Seaholm High School 
who will be starting 
her junior year in the 
fall. Over the course of 
her high school career, 
she has become very 
interested in entre-
preneurship. Having 
grown up going to the 
Birmingham Farmers 
Market with her family, 
Sherr thought it would 
be fun to start a busi-
ness at the market. To 
determine what kind of 
business she wanted to 
pursue, Sherr and some 
friends began research-
ing foreign street food. 
They looked into all 
kinds of treats from 
Dutch poffertjes (mini 
pancakes) to South 
American alfajores 
(shortbread cookies). 
Sherr then sent out a 
survey asking people 
which food they would 
be most interested in 
trying. The Hong Kong 
bubble waffle won by a large margin. 
She immediately decided that this 
would be the company’
s main dish.
When Sherr first began experiment-
ing with bubble waffles, she attempted 
to follow a badly translated recipe that 
came with her bubble waffle machine. 
After many failed batches, she turned 
to the internet and spent a few days 
trying out different recipes and getting 
her family’
s feedback.
Along with some friends from 
school, Sherr perfected her recipe and 
had a few “training days” in which 
everyone learned to use the machines, 
pour batter quickly and handle the 

waffles without popping the bubbles.
Crunchy on the outside, chewy 
on the inside and complete with any 
toppings you can imagine, the waffles 
have been a hit at the farmers’
 market.
“The response has been great,
” 
Sherr said. “People are really interest-
ed in the fact that we are just a group 
of high school kids run-
ning a business.”
Sherr has weekly 
volunteers who help 
at the Farmers Market 
as well as eight per-
manent staff members 
that she involves in the 
nitty-gritty side of run-
ning a waffle business. 
All the volunteers and 
staff members are high 
school students.
The company, called 
Waffle GOAT, attended 
its first farmers market 
just three months ago 
and has been doing 
very well. In addition 
to giving Sherr and her 
friends real-life entre-
preneurial experience, 
Waffle GOAT also helps 
other local businesses 
achieve the same suc-
cess by donating 10 
percent of profits to 
an organization called 
Detroit Techtown, 
which helps tech start-
ups and local businesses 
launch and grow. Sherr 
is supportive of their mission.
“Having gone through it, I know 
how hard it is to start a business,
” she 
said. “It’
s nice that we can help other 
budding entrepreneurs.
”
Sherr is looking to expand her busi-
ness by finding a Saturday venue as 
the Birmingham Farmers Market only 
takes place on Sundays. The company 
is also looking into catering parties 
and other events.
“Starting the business has been so 
fun, and I have learned so much about 
entrepreneurship — way more than I 
ever could in a class,
” Sherr said. ■

JESSIE COHEN JN INTERN

PHOTOS COURTESY OF VALARIE SHERR

Valarie 
Sherr

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