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Omar Aziz, youngest son of Omar and Haneefah Aziz, was born in New Orleans, a city of romance, charm and the world’s greatest foods. He grew up happy but perpetually baffled as to how his mother’s baking skills and his father’s ability to peddle homemade pies from a basket managed to support their family.
Omar had his first major encounter with entrepreneurship at the early age of 16. As a youth, Omar was content with sampling pies — not baking or selling them — until his mother encouraged him to help bake pies for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The festival put money in his pocket and a new respect for business in his mind. His family has been a part of this festive celebration of Louisiana culture, music, crafts and food since 1976. It was later, as a college student, that he began to test his entrepreneurial leaning. His college studies and his success selling his mother’s pies at the Jazz festival and in the University of New Orleans dormitories prompted him to put the two together. “I applied what I learned in my business courses,” he says. Omar became a student entrepreneur bridging the gap between academic theory and business practice.
Omar's talent for marketing and business development fueled the rapidly expanding pie business. He began selling his mother's famous pies in the French Market, at the 1984 Worlds Fair and soon opened pie shops in the French Quarter Marketplace, Jackson Brewery, Canal Place and in New Orleans’ famous Riverwalk Mall. Omar has made special appearances at the Dixieland Jazz Festival in California, Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Fanueil Hall in Boston, South Street Seaport and Bloomingdale’s in New York as part of the “Taste of Louisiana” promotions. Entrepreneur Magazine featured Omar's widely shared entrepreneurial equation — “K + A + C = Eł ” Omar has also offered a series of “Building a Business” seminars at Barnes & Noble entitled "How to Get Your Piece of the Pie: 12 Recipes for Entrepreneurial Success."
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