PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — Eating your vegetables is about to get a lot easier.
An organic juice bar, House of Juice, opens this week at 642 Rogers Ave., offering dine-in or take-out service for smoothies, juices, salads and “smoothie bowls” — cut fruit with a puree — from its new Rogers Avenue storefront, its owners said.
The shop is the first brick-and-mortar location for Danii Oliver and Kevin Braithwaite, husband-and-wife team behind the “garden-to-cup” business that they started after the birth of their daughter several years ago.
“We were very unhealthy beforehand and we started making changes during the pregnancy because we were feeding someone else,” Oliver said.
Since then, the pair — who each have a background in bartending and mixology — have built their “House of Juice” line, creating original mixes with all-organic fruits, vegetables, herbs and roots, including their signature “Purple Heart” drink made with hibiscus, apple, pineapple, cayenne and sorrel, an herb used frequently in West Indian cooking, she said.
“Sorrel is a big part of our culture and we wanted to do our own kind of spin,” she said.
After selling their juices at markets and pop-up shops for a few years, the first “House of Juice” brick-and-mortar location will open on Rogers Avenue near Parkside Avenue at 12 p.m. on Sunday.
Oliver said she envisions the spot as a “social environment.”
“So many juice bars are in-and-out. We wanted to create a place where people could come, sit down, relax, ask questions,” she said.
There will also be take-out service for those who want a healthier option to-go, she said — something she believes is sorely lacking in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and East Flatbush, where she and her family now live.
“We asked ourselves the question … You get home late from work and you’re hungry and you don’t feel like cooking. What would you like? Right now, all we have is Chinese food,” she said.
Alcohol will likely be on the menu at House of Juice, as well, as soon as the spot is properly licensed to serve it. For now, the juice bar serves fermented drinks kombucha and jun, but plans to serve cider, beer and wine made on-site to show customers “the whole process from seed to spirit,” Oliver said.
For more information about the House of Juice, visit the company's website.
