A family-run ice cream parlor now produces the frozen dessert daily on the ground floor of the Tycon Courthouse, the office building better known to locals as the “toilet bowl” building.
Terra Bechara, who lives in nearby Vienna with her husband and five children, opened Terra’s Ice Cream, Coffee and Sweets at 2070 Chain Bridge Rd, Suite 180, in Tysons on Thursday, August 8, overcoming months of permitting and construction hurdles.
The store is open daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., but has not yet launched a serious advertising campaign. Bechara has so far mainly notified other tenants in the building and posted the opening on Facebook. Still, the community’s response has been encouraging.
“It’s been great. We’ve had a really good response to things,” she told FFXnow. “I’m surprised we have a lot of repeat customers already, which is good, and … we’ve sold out (of pastries) daily, which is great because I like to bake fresh things daily and I don’t want things to go to waste.”
Ice cream has long been a family business for Bechara. She entered the industry at age 15 when her parents opened Yum Yum Ice Cream Café in Fairfax Towne Center.
Bechara says she learned valuable business and social skills at the store, which sold ice cream and baked goods. After graduating high school, she attended George Mason University for a year before pursuing her passion for cooking and baking and transferring to the prestigious culinary school at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island.
There she earned a degree in business administration and pastry making, but after graduating she feared that her two dreams of opening her own café and starting a family were incompatible.
“It’s very difficult in this industry, so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll put my cafe on hold, my dream of opening my own place,'” Bechara said. “I decided to work with my father in the insurance industry. I became an insurance broker.”
Bechara’s dream of having a family was coming true, and as her children grew older—including a 15-year-old son who now helps out at Terra’s—she felt the time was right to pursue her culinary goal as well.
Although she had always hoped to stay close to home, Bechara says it was a happy coincidence that while looking for possible locations, the retail space next to Rodi’s Salon, which her husband has owned for nearly 20 years, became available.
Not only does Terra’s make everything in-house, right down to the Oreos in a cookies-and-cream ice cream that’s already one of its best-selling flavors, it also uses primarily natural and gluten-free ingredients, often sourced from small businesses.
The ice cream, for example, uses A2 milk and cream from Snowville Creamery in Ohio. Bechara flavors and churns it on-site using a recipe she developed with the milk supplier. She says she also sources a version of Nutella from a family-run New York business and tea from a local woman who makes organic tea.
“I’m very particular about the ingredients and what’s in the products. So I always read the labels and try to find the cleanest options. I teach my kids the same thing,” she said. “My goal is to create products that are very simple. Ice cream, for example, is just milk, cream, sugar and flavoring. It shouldn’t have any additives or artificial flavors or colors, so I try to keep things very, very natural.”
Terra’s serves 20 different flavors of ice cream at a time, including two rotating sorbets and four dairy-free, oat-based options. About four flavors will rotate depending on the season, so pumpkin and apple cinnamon could be coming this fall.
The cookies, muffins, scones and other baked goods will generally remain the same, although Bechara says she’s already received suggestions for other flavors. She hopes to expand the baked goods offerings and add some savory creations in the future.
Terra’s road to existence has been fraught with obstacles. The planned early summer launch was delayed by various permitting, contractor and shipping delays, Bechara says. In fact, when FFXnow stopped by last Thursday (August 15), the shop was still waiting for its cold brew coffee machine.
However, Bechara is confident that everything will be resolved by September.
“I plan to have a grand opening in about a month, once we have everything, all the issues are resolved and everything is more or less finalized,” Bechara said.
