Ever Heard of a Stroopwafel?

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Envision two chewy waffle-esque sugar cookies with a syrupy layer of caramel sandwiched in between. Imagine what it would be like to not only eat this treat, but to place it atop the rim of a mug filled with a warm beverage, allowing the interior caramel to become melted and the cookie to become infused with the flavors of the beverage. And then to eat it.

Stroopwafels, or “syrup waffles,” originated in the Netherlands over two hundred years ago when a baker serendipitously combined scraps from his bakery and sweetened them with syrup. Since they were inexpensive to make, they were especially popular among the poor. Today they are still eaten by the Dutch, traditionally for breakfast to accompany coffee or tea. According to some sources, stroopwafel recipes are closely guarded secrets, passed down from parent to child, and difficult to recreate from scratch.

At Connecticut College there are now three locales—Coffee Grounds, Blue Camel, and Oasis—that sell these delicacies, made by the brand Rip van Wafels, which was created by a Dutch 2010 graduate of Brown University. As a sophomore, Abhishek Pruisken, also known as “Rip”, was feeling homesick and decided to bring a piece of the Netherlands back with him to Brown.

His peers could not get enough of the treat. He began testing recipes on his own in his dorm room in between classes and finally settled on a recipe, which his friends deemed tastier than the stroopwafels that he had brought back from Holland.

Upon returning to Brown in the fall of 2009, Pruisken set up a stroopwafel iron on the Main Green, which confirmed their popularity. Over his winter break that year, Pruisken visited eight stroopwafel factories in the Netherlands and observed how Dutch professionals made them. In the spring semester he put his new knowledge to work and began producing in higher volume to sell stroopwafels at Brown and RISD. Soon, cafés around Providence began asking for van Wafels, as they came to be known.

The operation intensified and Pruisken found that he needed more advanced machinery to keep up with demands. He created a customized stroopwafel iron prototype with the assistance of a professor and a group of engineering students and, using Kickstarter.com, managed to raise over $20,000 of working capital.

At this point, Pruisken needed a business partner and in spring 2011, his friend Marco De Leon, Brown ’12, teamed up with him. “I was coming back from a semester abroad in Brazil and looking to get involved in something different,” said De Leon in an email. “Abhishek and I were good friends and decided to give the business a shot. We put together a business plan in April and ended up winning the Brown Startup Competition [Brown University Business Plan Competition]. Since then, we developed the new packaging, boxing, recipe and figured out a way to scale up.” A couple months later, De Leon gave up his Wall Street job offer and a month-and-a-half ago the Rip van Wafels operation relaunched.

De Leon recounts, “Business (especially the food industry) is incredibly dependent on personal contact. We’ve spent many nights on friends’ couches, slept in our car a few too many times – all while trying to sell Rip van Wafels at different places. But that has also been the most rewarding aspect because we can see first hand what we are creating.”

The two entrepreneurs have succeeded in bringing stroopwafels to the United States and they appear to have an eager and ever-growing market for their enterprise.

De Leon and Pruisken acknowledge that their experiencing represents the illustrious narrative of prosperity, in which one achieves both happiness and personal fulfillment through self-determination, known as the American Dream. De Leon says, “At the heart of it, our largest motivation is freedom. We wanted to have the freedom to create something and pursue something that we were passionate about. We both turned down finance jobs and have decided that this is what we want to pursue in the long term.”

Rip van Wafels is already quite prevalent on campus. Co-manager of Coffee Grounds Café, Liz de Lise ’13, says, “People are excited to see something new and colorful on the counter. Some know what [stroopwafels] are and go crazy when they see them. I think people like the idea of being involved in the product they are buying. With a stroopwafel you don’t just eat it cold, you put it on top of your coffee cup and watch the magic happen.”

De Lise notes that it is important to her to support business endeavors that she respects. Rip van Wafels “in particular was intriguing because it’s not just some random product, it’s something that is representative of [Pruisken]’s culture and background. Customers should be exposed to other cultural experiences even if it is on as small a scale as a melty waffle.” •