The fast-food fryers are gone from 718 Rockville Pike, replaced by taro milk tea, shaved ice and trays of Asian-inspired pastries. Crust & Crumb has opened a bakery and cafe inside the building that housed a Roy Rogers restaurant for decades, bringing coffee, specialty teas and desserts to a stretch of Rockville Pike already crowded with competitors.
The new cafe offers Asian-inspired baked goods, pastries, coffee, specialty teas and desserts, according to The MoCo Show, which first reported the opening. Its drink menu includes taro milk tea, brown sugar oat lattes, passion fruit green tea, mango pomelo sago and cookies and cream frappes, while the dessert case rotates through shaved ice, snowflake ice and tofu pudding, per the same report. To mark the launch, Crust & Crumb is running a soft-opening promotion offering a free gift for qualifying purchases, including Halloween-themed items and mystery boxes.
A Decades-Old Fast-Food Landmark Gives Way
The Roy Rogers that once occupied the space closed permanently in December 2025, after the chain had operated in the region for more than 55 years, according to The MoCo Show. Roy Rogers Restaurants was founded in 1968, and Marriott owned the chain until 1990, according to the Society of American Archivists. The chain's exit left a vacancy along Rockville Pike.
That demand showed up quickly. The 718 Rockville Pike retail space drew fierce competition among national prospective tenants before landing with Crust & Crumb under a personal guarantee from an experienced operator, according to Crexi. The same local outlet reported a permit for interior work at the space, while commercial listings had already identified Crust & Crumb as the incoming tenant by late 2025.
Part of a Crowded, 2.9-Acre Retail Strip
Crust & Crumb now shares a 2.9-acre retail strip along Maryland Route 355 with co-tenants including hot-chicken franchise Hangry Joe's, AAA Rockville Car Care and Patient First urgent care, according to commercial real estate records from Revere CRE. Marketing documents from KLNB put average daily traffic on the Pike at roughly 48,354 vehicles, underscoring the visibility of the site for a new food and beverage business.
That traffic flows past a corridor that has become one of the region's most competitive strips for Asian bakeries, tea shops and cafes, Hoodline has reported. Earlier this month, Hoodline detailed the arrival of another tea and bakery concept on Rockville Pike, part of the same wave of openings reshaping the strip's food scene.
A Built-In Customer Base Along the Pike
The demographic math behind that boom is substantial. Asian residents made up 21.6% of Rockville's population, or 14,477 people out of 67,117 total residents, according to official 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data published by the City of Rockville, making Asian residents the city's second-largest racial demographic group. Countywide, Asian American residents represent 16% of Montgomery County's 1.08 million residents, or 170,325 people, per 2024 American Community Survey estimates relayed by the Asian American Health Initiative.
The city's demographics sit alongside a retail market where new entrants like Crust & Crumb are betting that a built-in customer base, visible traffic counts and an already-renovated former fast-food shell can translate into a lasting foothold on one of Montgomery County's busiest commercial corridors.
