Meet Frūt Vybez: Fresh Fruit, Family Business and the Next Generation of the Vybez Cartel

Aug 27

Haajar and Terrence Collins spent years building the award winning Fūd Vybez before turning the trailer where it all began into something new. Frūt Vybez is colorful, creative and unapologetically fun, but underneath the designer fruit cups and homemade punch is a much bigger plan: teaching their children how a family builds something that can outlive one generation.

By Hearthara Live

Haajar and Terrence Collins had a perfectly good food trailer sitting in front of them.

Actually, it was more important than that.

It was their first trailer.

Fūd Vybez, the flagship business they had spent years building, had outgrown it. In 2023, they moved Fūd Vybez into a larger trailer, leaving behind the mobile kitchen that had helped get their family business to that point.

They could have sold it.

Instead, they looked at what they had already built and saw another beginning.

A year later, Frūt Vybez Fruit Truck arrived.

The new concept would be fresh, sweet and colorful, built around fruit instead of cooking with fire. It would give Haajar and Terrence another creative outlet inside the growing family of businesses they call The Vybez Cartel.

More importantly, it could give their children something of their own.

“We wanted to make sure our starter trailer still had a place at home and in our business lineup,” they explain. The idea was to give their children “something to earn their own money” while showing them another way food could become a creative business.

That makes Frūt Vybez considerably more interesting than a second food truck.

It is a lesson in entrepreneurship disguised as a really good fruit cup.

Eight years of Vybez came before the fruit

Fūd Vybez came first.

Over eight years, Haajar and Terrence built their flagship into an established part of the local food truck community, eventually outgrowing the trailer where it began. Along the way, Fūd Vybez also proved it could compete, taking home a trophy at the Taste of the Titans Crawfish Showdown.

So when the Collinses launched Frūt Vybez, they were not starting from scratch.

They were taking everything years of running an award winning food truck had taught them and asking a different question:

What can we build next, and how can we bring our children into it?

That question sits underneath much of what Frūt Vybez has become.

Haajar and Terrence describe the larger family brand as rooted in a love of community, food and music, and the new truck gave them room to explore another side of food while keeping the same energy that helped establish Fūd Vybez.

There was also something meaningful about refusing to discard the trailer where the story began.

The original Fūd Vybez trailer did not become an outdated piece of equipment once the flagship moved into something bigger.

It became the beginning of the next business.

Half fruit. Half drink. All Vybez.

If Haajar and Terrence get to choose what you order first, they want you to try the Frūt and Sip.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” they say.

They mean that literally.

One half is a fruit cup. The other half is your drink, with either their signature homemade Motherland Punch or Tropical Splash Lemonade.

It is the kind of product that makes immediate sense at a festival. You are walking around in the Tennessee heat, you want something cold, you want something to eat, and carrying two separate things suddenly feels unnecessarily complicated.

Frūt Vybez solved the problem by putting both experiences together.

The rest of the menu gives fruit plenty of room to play.

There are smoothie bowls, designer fruit cups, Fruuty Floats, smoothies, punch and lemonade, alongside the Frūt and Sip.

Customers have particularly gravitated toward the smoothies and fruit cups.

But the designer fruit cups are the product Haajar and Terrence believe best represents what Frūt Vybez is trying to do.

Their reasoning is bigger than presentation.

The cups demonstrate how food can be art, sustenance, filling and delicious at the same time.

That is the sweet spot for this truck.

Fruit does not have to be the thing sitting sadly beside the food you actually wanted.

At Frūt Vybez, fruit gets to be the event.

Creativity without fire

Haajar and Terrence love fruit, but what really interested them was what they could do with it.

Frūt Vybez gave them an opportunity to approach food differently from Fūd Vybez.

No fire required.

Instead, the creative work happens through combinations, presentation, drinks, smoothies and the visual possibilities of fresh fruit.

That distinction also gives The Vybez Cartel two concepts that belong to the same family without asking one truck to imitate the other.

Fūd Vybez remains the flagship.

Frūt Vybez is its fresh, sweet and creative counterpart.

You can see the relationship between them, but one does not exist simply as a copy of the other.

That matters when you are building more than one business under a recognizable family identity. Haajar and Terrence are creating reasons for customers to know both names.

In fact, they have already figured out the appropriate solution for anyone struggling to choose between them.

Have both.

Start with Frūt Vybez. Finish with Fūd Vybez.

Haajar and Terrence have their Chattanooga World Food Truck Festival strategy ready.

Their advice is essentially to make a day of it.

Start with Frūt Vybez at the World Food Truck Festival, then head down to Riverfront Nights and get dinner from the flagship Fūd Vybez truck.

That might sound like a particularly enthusiastic sales plan until you remember what these two have spent years creating.

There are now multiple expressions of the same family business operating in the same community.

One can hand you a designer fruit cup and homemade punch.

The other can take care of dinner.

For Haajar and Terrence, that is evidence of growth.

Eight years ago, there was no Vybez Cartel.

Now there is enough Vybez to plan your day around it.

The real product may be what their children are watching

Ask Haajar and Terrence about their biggest success and their answer changes the meaning of the entire business.

It is not a sales number.

It is not the second trailer.

It is not even the recognition Fūd Vybez has earned.

Their biggest success, they say, is “passing on entrepreneurship to our children.”

That is why repurposing the original trailer matters so much.

Frūt Vybez gives their children a way to participate in something tangible. There is work attached to the lesson. Money has to be earned. Customers have to be served. Consistency matters. An idea has to function in the real world.

Haajar and Terrence are trying to teach their children something they had to learn by building it themselves.

Their stated long term goal is generational wealth.

That phrase gets used loosely sometimes.

Here, it has a very practical beginning.

Keep the first trailer.

Build another business.

Teach the kids.

Show them what consistency looks like.

Let them see what happens when a family keeps ownership of what it has created and uses one success to make room for another.

The fruit cups are colorful.

The lesson underneath them is serious.

Born on the same day, building the same life

There is another detail Haajar and Terrence casually drop into their story that feels almost too perfect.

They are a husband and wife team.

And they were born on the same day.

Not simply two people building businesses together.

Two people sharing a birthday while doing it.

They describe the operation as family owned, mom and pop, husband and wife run. Outside of work, they enjoy traveling and eating good food, which feels appropriate for two people whose professional lives have revolved around figuring out what other people might want to eat next.

Their family is also the thing that keeps them moving.

Haajar and Terrence say their motivation comes from making their family proud and showing their children how to remain consistent “until a dream is your reality.”

That line deserves attention because consistency has already been tested.

Eight years means surviving some things

The polished version of a growing food business is easy to tell.

First truck.

Bigger truck.

Second concept.

Awards.

Expansion.

The actual version has COVID in the middle of it.

Haajar and Terrence identify the pandemic as one of the major challenges they have faced, alongside the ongoing difficulty of maintaining individuality in a saturated market.

That second challenge may be just as important.

There are a lot of food trucks. There are a lot of smoothies. There are plenty of places to buy lemonade and fruit.

Being good is necessary, but it does not automatically make a business memorable.

The Collinses have responded by making the larger brand feel like them.

They have the Vybez name.

They have music and community woven into the identity.

They have products such as the Frūt and Sip that give customers something recognizable to associate with the truck.

They have the credibility that comes from years spent building Fūd Vybez, including bringing home a trophy from the Taste of the Titans Crawfish Showdown.

And they have a very specific feeling they want people to experience when they show up.

Come over. Eat something. Talk to us.

Haajar and Terrence describe what they want from both Fūd Vybez and Frūt Vybez in a way that makes the entire family of businesses easier to understand.

They want visiting either truck to feel like “visiting home or your favorite friends with dope food and great conversation.”

That is the Vybez.

Not simply music.

Not simply branding.

A feeling.

You are supposed to enjoy being there.

That also explains why festivals suit them so well.

Haajar and Terrence say some of their favorite parts of the business are the places it takes them and the people they meet along the way. At festivals and markets, they get to make new friends and customers.

For a family brand built around community, food and music, those environments are not merely sales opportunities.

They are where the brand makes the most sense.

There is food moving across the counter, music somewhere nearby, people coming and going, conversations starting and kids watching their parents turn all of it into a living.

The business is happening right in front of them.

So is the lesson.

Ask yourself how badly you want it

After eight years, Haajar and Terrence have advice for anyone attracted to the idea of starting a business.

It is not particularly soft.

“Start by asking yourself how bad do you want it and what are you willing to sacrifice to make it happen.”

That question carries more weight when it comes from people who have built through COVID, changed trailers, expanded concepts and kept a family business operating while raising the next generation inside it.

Entrepreneurship looks charming from the customer side of a festival window.

There is music playing. People are eating. The fruit is beautiful.

Behind that is the consistency they keep talking about.

There are long days, changing costs, equipment, inventory, competition and the constant work of giving customers a reason to remember your name when there are dozens of other places they could spend their money.

The Collins children are getting to see both versions.

That may ultimately be one of the most valuable things Frūt Vybez gives them.

Not merely the possibility of inheriting a business.

The knowledge of what building one requires.

Stay locked in

Ask Haajar and Terrence what comes next and they are not giving it away.

“Stay locked in you’ll see.”

Fair enough.

For now, customers can find Frūt Vybez on Highway 58 or track the truck through the Dadbod Go app. The larger Vybez family can also be followed through the Fūd Vybez online presence.

But the best place to understand what Haajar and Terrence are building may still be in front of the trucks.

Fūd Vybez tells you where this family has already been.

Frūt Vybez tells you where they might be going.

One business grew enough to leave its first trailer behind, and instead of treating that trailer as something they had outgrown, Haajar and Terrence turned around and gave it a new purpose.

Fresh fruit went in.

Another business came out.

And their children got a front row seat.

There is something beautifully practical about that version of generational wealth. It does not begin with an inheritance handed over decades from now.

It begins while everyone is still here to build it together.

With a husband and wife who share a birthday and a vision.

With an award winning flagship that proved the concept could work.

With children learning what their parents learned by doing.

With a trailer that mattered too much to sell.

With designer fruit cups that turn food into something worth looking at before you eat it.

With a Frūt and Sip in your hand.

And, if Haajar and Terrence have their way, with the feeling that you did not simply stop at a food truck.

You stopped by to see your favorite friends.

They just happened to have dope food waiting.

Sara Turney