In the heart of Baton Rouge, one wellness bar is serving up healthy foods in a unique and refreshing way. Trap Haus is a plant-based food shop in Mid City whose purpose goes beyond just blending fruit.
The shop opened back in May on 1300 Government St. and is already impressing the city with its colorful and vibrant smoothie bowls and fresh squeezed juices. This juice and wellness bar offers a bold new approach to vegan cuisine with intention behind every dish.
The menu consists of items made with fresh ingredients, each designed to have different health benefits. Trap Haus also has a fridge full of premade juices, all with different flavors and health benefits. From multi-vitamins to detoxes, these juices are full of antioxidants that help improve digestive health, brain health, skin health and lung health.
The smoothie bar allows customers to customize their smoothie bowls how they see fit. Its best selling smoothie bowls are the TrapAcai bowl and the Pink Powder bowl. The TrapAcai bowl includes a classic acai base topped with fresh banana, blueberry, sliced strawberry, granola, honey and a scoop of peanut butter. The Pink Powder bowl features a cheesecake base topped with graham cracker and strawberry.
The motive behind the restaurant was to promote the natural healing properties found in plant based food and how they vary from what we typically see in Western medicine. Terrez Collins, owner of Trap Haus, says that the restaurant’s name and branding signifies a way to distribute nature’s remedies: fresh fruits and vegetables.
“We use unrefined, untampered, fresh fruit, fresh veggies, which is considered a drug in nature, by the standards that we’ve created,” Collins said. “Just seeing how Western medicine is slinging drugs, I decided to sling nature’s drugs and see how to help people and give them better alternatives.”
Beyond smoothies and juices, Trap Haus also specializes in plant-based soul food dishes, which Collins feels deeply connected to as a New Orleans native. Collins believes that soul food can still be enjoyed even on a plant-based diet.
“Being from New Orleans, I grew up on smothered this and fried that,” Collins said. “So what we did was we got creative and just everything we were used to eating, we just made it vegan. So all the way down from the hot sauces to the stuffed bell peppers to steak and eggs, we made it vegan.”
For Collins, Trap Haus wellness bar is the perfect way to get to know the community and use it as an educational space. She takes pride in being able to educate everyone who walks through her doors about health and wellness.
“We’re not just here just to sell a product,” Collins said. “It’s to get creative, engage the community and let your taste buds experience something different. We show people how to fast and how to cleanse and realign themselves. So it goes way deeper than just what the eyes can see.”
Trap Haus is currently open Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., though the hours are subject to change. The shop also participates in pop ups where they sell an assortment of vegan delicacies across the city.
Trap Haus serves up more than just health conscious food — they serve experience. If you’re looking to explore some vegan food options in Mid City or discover a new approach to plant-based eating, Trap Haus is a stop worth making.
