At one time not so long ago, the owners of Serial Grillers had four locations of the burger, sandwich and pizza restaurant: A Detroit-style pizzeria with an adjacent taproom, a taco shop, a barbecue joint and a nano-brewery.
Today, they are down to just two Serial Grillers restaurants: the flagship at 5737 E. Speedway and the southeast side location at 7585 S. Houghton Road.
Over the past several weeks, owners Travis and William Miller quietly closed Transplant Detroit Pizza on East Speedway and its sister taproom, Craft, A Modern Drinkery; Serial Grillers on West Cortaro Road in Marana; and Mosaic Brewing on North Oracle Road that they acquired in 2023 from Dillinger Brewing.
The former Marana location of Serial Grillers, 5660 W. Cortaro Farms Rd., recently closed.
"We just felt we needed to restructure our current business operations to focus on the stores that had the best chance of success moving into 2026 and beyond," Travis Miller said Thursday as he, his brother and their partners, Robert McFadyen and Jared Yokota, considered ways to incorporate Transplant into Serial Grillers "so we don't lose our Detroit-style pizzas that we worked so hard to build."
Travis Peters, former co-owner of The Parish, left, partnered with Travis Miller at Transplant Pizza in January 2025. The hope at the time was to expand Transplant's menu. The restaurant was among the casualties of Miller and his partners' plan to refocus the business on the remaining two Serial Grillers locations.Â
"The plan is to roll out, in the next few weeks, our most popular items from Transplant at both Speedway and Houghton locations," Miller said.
The Millers opened Transplant in 2021 after falling in love with the Detroit-style pizza they had experienced in San Francisco and Phoenix. At the time, the only pizzeria in Tucson offering the square focaccia-like pizza, with the pillowy crust and cheese melted into the edges, was Pizza Hut, which had rolled out its version a few months earlier.
A cook scoops chicken while making street corn chicken tacos back when Toro Loco Tacos y Burros was still open. The restaurant was open from 2019 to late 2023.
The Millers started their restaurant journey when they launched Serial Grillers as a food truck in 2012, serving sandwiches and burgers named after made-for-Hollywood serial killers.
A year later, buoyed by the restaurant's success, they opened their first brick-and-mortar at 5737 E. Speedway. The restaurant was in that location for several years before moving a couple of blocks down Speedway to a bigger space at 5975.Â
Over the years, the partners flirted with several concepts for that space, including Boulevard BBQ & Fixins, a collaboration between Serial Grillers and David Martin that was open less than a year, from October 2020 to September 2021.
A sign on the door informs customers that Marana's Serial Grillers location is permanently closed.
Then came the fast-food Mexican restaurant Toro Loco Tacos y Burros, which moved into the space three years after it opened in 2019 on East Broadway.
Not long after Toro Loco closed in 2023, the Millers announced they were bringing Serial Grillers back to the original East Speedway location.
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In addition to finding a space on the Serial Grillers menu for Transplant pizza, Miller said they are "toying with the idea of doing a Toro Loco Tuesday where we bring back some of our Toro Loco favorites."
The chain-locked and empty patio dining area outside the closed Serial Grillers, 5660 W. Cortaro Farms Road. Over the past several weeks, its owners closed the Marana restaurant as well as Transplant Detroit Pizza, Craft, A Modern Drinkery and Mosaic Brewing.
