Drive Rogers Drive from the Highway 101 interchange to the edge of town this month and you will pass a Crisp & Green with a line still forming near the door, an oil change bay that did not exist a year ago, and a construction fence where Dave's Hot Chicken is supposed to open a drive-through inside an old bank building. Keep going toward the south end of Highway 101 and the pattern flips. A wing restaurant that was still working through permitting as recently as late last year. A dog-friendly restaurant that opened last spring remains the only sit-down option for several blocks in either direction.
Two very different kinds of new, in the same small city, moving at two very different speeds, landing in two very specific places. That is not the market sorting itself out on its own. That is a plan the city put in writing.
The City Sold the Land First
Rogers has spent the last two years doing something most cities leave to chance: deciding, parcel by parcel, exactly where its next restaurants would go. In July 2024, the Rogers City Council approved a $500,000 purchase agreement selling 2.7 acres of city-owned property at Highway 101 and County Road 144 to Jacob Ventures, the company behind Ray J's American Grill. Community Development Director Brett Angell told the council the sale, paired with an earlier sale to Ripple Effect Brewing on the same stretch, would "bring a new life to this area and side of Highway 101."
That is a city describing its own land sale as a deliberate move to seed a corridor, not a passive response to demand. The same logic shows up again in Rogers' Key Developments filings, which lay out a three-phase redevelopment at the corner of 141st Avenue and Rogers Drive called Asguard. Phase one is a rebuilt Broadway Pizza with a golf simulator and an attached State Farm office. Phase two is a Kwik Trip. Phase three is a 71-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail and a fitness center, plus a public trail facing the adjacent wetland. The city planned this as a sequence years in advance, not a coincidence of several businesses happening to like the same corner.
Once you know the city has been assembling these clusters on purpose, the last twelve months of openings stop looking random and start looking like a schedule finally coming due.
The Interstate Side: Convenience Arrives in Weeks
Everything landing near the Highway 101 and I-94 interchange has opened fast, in the way national chains open when a market has already been vetted and a site is already permitted.
- Crisp & Green opened its 22nd Minnesota location on Rogers Drive in early August 2026, marking its entry with a free food event on August 7 and an outdoor workout class the following morning.
- Take 5 Oil Change opened its first Rogers shop on August 17, 2026, offering ten-minute oil changes from two service bays.
- Dave's Hot Chicken confirmed plans to move into the former Wells Fargo bank building along the same corridor, with a drive-through expected to open by late summer 2026 as part of a wider push bringing at least six new Minnesota locations online this year.
- Broadway Pizza's rebuilt Rogers location, the opening move in the city's Asguard plan, is already serving pizza and running its golf simulators out of a new building directly behind its old one, with a Kwik Trip and the 71-unit apartment building still to come.
None of this required years of planning on the tenant side. These are operators who go where the site work is already done. That is exactly what a city selling pre-approved commercial parcels near an interstate exit is built to attract.
The Highway 101 Side: A Slower Bet on Sitting Down and Staying Awhile
A few minutes south, the story runs on a completely different clock, because the city was betting on something harder to build: a reason to park the car and stay.
The Block Food + Drink was the opening move. Craft & Crew Hospitality, the group behind seven other Twin Cities restaurants including Pub 819 in Hopkins and Stanley's in Minneapolis, opened The Block in May 2025 on the site of the old Muni bar. Co-owner Luke Derheim called it the first time the company had ever repeated a concept anywhere, after the original Block opened in St. Louis Park back in 2019. The Rogers version added something the original never had: a year-round, dog-friendly "Pawtio" that seats around 110 people and comes with its own menu for the dogs.
Ray J's American Grill is following the same corridor, on the land the city sold in 2024, just south of the parcel the city sold to Ripple Effect Brewing on Northdale Boulevard. Owner Mark Jacob, who lives at the Maple Grove-Rogers border, told the Star Tribune he had been trying to open a location in Rogers for years and called it the first time his family's business had ever built a restaurant from scratch instead of moving into an existing space. As of late 2025, architectural filings still listed the 6,585-square-foot project as in permitting, with an outdoor pickleball court and patio planned around it, well past the original target of a late 2025 opening.
That gap matters. The interstate side filled up in a matter of weeks because the sites were already built for turnkey tenants. The Highway 101 side is taking years because the city was recruiting restaurants willing to build something from the ground up, and that kind of project runs on a construction schedule, not a franchise rollout calendar.
What Doesn't Change While the Restaurants Do
None of this touches the parts of Rogers that have stayed the same while the restaurant map fills in around them. The Rogers Farmers Market still runs its regular season on Main Street with a rotating cast of local vendors and food trucks, and keeps a smaller winter version going on the third Wednesday of the month through March for anyone who wants fresh goods without waiting for spring. Rockin' Rogers, the Rogers Lions Club's annual family festival, held its 2026 run June 18 through 20, the same weekend fixture it has been for years. And the old Rogers Activity Center now operates as the TruStone Center, home to the new HealthPartners Fieldhouse, the kind of facility upgrade that happens quietly while everyone is watching the restaurant openings instead.
That contrast is worth sitting with. The city is not remaking Rogers from scratch. It picked two corridors, sold the land under them, and let the rest of town keep doing what it already does well.
The Part Worth Remembering
If you have been wondering why Rogers seems to be getting a new place to eat every few weeks this year while other stretches of town look untouched, the answer is not luck and it is not simply growth. The city decided years ago which two corridors would change, sold the land to make it happen, and is now watching two very different timelines play out on schedule. The interstate side will keep filling in fast, because that is what pre-built commercial pads do. The Highway 101 side will keep taking longer, because sit-down restaurants with pickleball courts and dog patios are not built in a summer.
Knowing which corridor you are standing on tells you what to expect next, and roughly how long you will have to wait for it.
Rogers keeps changing in ways that are easy to notice and harder to explain, and that is true of most of the towns in this corner of the state. If you are curious about what is actually driving the changes in your own neighborhood, or you just want someone who tracks this stuff for a living to answer a question over coffee, Zachman Realty Group is easy to reach and happy to talk shop, no transaction required.
