Photo by Nancy Royden. Olivia Hawkins, 7, and Julia Hawkins, 10, both of Lanham, enjoy treats at the newly opened Rita’s.

Published on: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

By Nancy Royden

Julia Hawkins and her sister Olivia now have a place in Seabrook where they can get two of their favorite frozen treats, as Rita’s Ice-Custard-Happiness is now open.

The girls say best of all, they like Vanilla Ice and custard with a twist of chocolate and vanilla. They will have a chance to sample all sorts of flavors and combinations at a location within walking distance of their home.

Pretzel Blendinis, regular Blendinis, Mistos, custards, Cream Ice and other chilly desserts are being offered by store owner Todd Rogers and his group of approximately 20 employees in the newly opened store on Lanham-Severn Road.

“Pretty much, it was an abandoned neighborhood icon, Rogers said. “The building has been completely renovated.”

Rogers, who transformed the building formerly occupied by Tastee-Freez into a modern shop, has lived the Prince George’s area for 25 years and is excited about the new venture.

The business opened April 15 and the crew gave away regular-sized cups of the treats in celebration of the shop’s first days of operation. The samples allowed the new customers to taste different types of flavors and styles of desserts.

“We have old-fashioned frozen custard and Gelati. It’s a combination of custard on the bottom, (flavored) ice in the middle and custard on the top. And we have sugar-free ice,” Rogers said.

There are some customers with diets that must be as sugar-free as possible, and Rogers said the shop offers desserts to satisfy their sweet teeth.

Rogers said he is excited to have the shop open and it took much preparation – about three years from start to store opening - to accomplish that. Now that it is open, he plans to become highly active in the community by helping groups raise money for their good causes.

Rogers has a background in sales and the computer industry, and he recalled how he helped get computers in schools where they were needed. He seeks to carry this same sense of serving others through his shop. He is planning to host service projects with other businesses in the vicinity of the shop.

“We’re in partnership for the fund-raising activities,” he said. “My mom and dad were involved in community service. My uncle owned a charter school in D.C.”

His mother, Darlene Rogers, was the first black woman elected to office in Youngstown, Ohio and his father, was elevated to a management position at General Motors in the early 1960s.

“My mother was a social worker, so we were always doing something related to families and kids,” Rogers said.

Some of the places where Rogers and his family volunteered while he was growing up included food banks and nursing homes.

A company-wide project for Rita’s Ice-Custard-Happiness that Rogers wants to pursue is raising money for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer in June. He said the shop will be making a donation from proceeds raised during that month.

He also is interested in sponsoring historic car nights and motorcycle nights to encourage a sense of community while drawing folks to the store.

One day after graduating from college, Rogers moved to Washington, D.C. in 1986 with his friend James Bittle, who is now manager of the shop. Rogers moved to this area to seek,  “meaningful employment.” He was a resident of West Lanham Hills for 15 years and now lives in a different part of Prince George’s County. He is the father of a son who is in law school at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, a son who is a student at Temple University in Philadelphia and a daughter who is a younger student at home.

In the entrepreneurial sprit that led Rogers to open the shop, he has sought out employees, many of them who are in high school or otherwise young, to have the drive to eventually want to open their own businesses.

“All of them have varying backgrounds. They want to be involved in business. What they all had was the ability to learn,” he said.

Children who are interested in working in the shop must be at least 14 years old.

The store will be offering discount coupons on its Web site and information about activities it is sponsoring.

Anyone who signs up to receive information via e-mail may read about flavors of frozen treats on specific days, plus, flavors will be posted daily on RitasOfLanham@verizon.net.