'Too Good To Gatekeep': GMU Student Showcases Family Treats In New Pop-Up Bakery

VIENNA, VA – Twenty-two-year-old George Mason University student Noor Musa is inviting friends and neighbors to pull up a seat and have a cookie.

The final-year student has launched Mama’s Table, a pop-up bakery, to share family favorites, including her real mama’s famous layered bar, at farmers’ markets in the Fairfax area.

The current lineup of treats (loosen your belts now) includes Nana’s Favorite: salted oat maple coconut cookies, The Glampa: double chocolate chunk banana bread cookies, Mama’s Layered Bar: chocolate, fudgey coconut bars, and more unnamed but not unloved cookies.

It was the layered bar that launched this home business, Musa tells Patch.

Mama’s Layered Bar is a treat that was made by Musa’s grandmother for her mom, then by her mom for Musa and her siblings. As she grew up, she realized, “We need to share this with the world,” Musa says. “I think it's just too good to gatekeep. So we were like, ‘Let's just share this with people.’”

She’s starting locally, organizing a pop-up farmers market at The Main on University, an apartment complex near the GMU campus, and at the Hawa Fairfax Community Center. Next will be a stall at the Mosaic Freshfarm Farmers Market, which she hopes to launch later this fall for the market's winter season.

Musa tells Patch the business has been a dream of hers for the past year, and after months of wondering whether she’d have the time or the resources, she decided to just … find out.

“I just kind of thought to myself, ‘We should just do this and see what happens,’” she told Patch. “What's the worst that could happen? So then we just took off from there and hit the ground running.” They started taste-testing in August and soft-launched this month, with pop-ups starting regularly at the end of the month.

Fellow George Mason University students have been helping with the taste and aesthetics testing.

The operation's eponymous mama, Soraya Amra, is Nusa's other hand in the business, though she's gotten family input from many quarters. “This has been mainly a two-man show, just me and my mom kind of figuring things out,” Musa says. “But we do kind of have a family history of small businesses or regular businesses, and so they gave me the ins and outs, what I should expect, what I should prepare for and the things I should make note of. So they were super helpful.”

She also says her student community has provided lots of support. “I'm very lucky to just have some time to do this while still being a student because everyone has ideas and they have parents who have started businesses, or they've started businesses. So everyone's just been very, very helpful.”

Musa says that of course, she has dreams of catering or running a brick-and-mortar bakery, but she’s content to take one step at a time, see what resonates with her guests and build from there.

For now, you’ll find her, Mama Soraya and maybe even her dad with cookies and more at The Main on University courtyard in Fairfax on Sept. 25 from 12 to 2 p.m., and Hisba at Hawa Center (4401 Fair Lakes Ct., Fairfax) on Sept. 26th from 12 to 4 p.m.