Luke’s on Speedway has closed, after being locked out of his restaurant for failure to pay rent. Luckily, there are other Luke’s locations to keep your belly happy. 

From the Luke’s on Grant Facebook:

A Message to Our Valued Customers of Lukes Restaurants.
As some of you may have heard, the Lukes location on Speedway Blvd has closed it’s doors. Sometimes there are just too many obstacles to overcome. As disheartening as this is, we would like to ensure our customers that we will continue to proudly serve you at our Lukes on Grant location as well as the Lukes on Alvernon, Lukes on Ft. Lowell, Lukes on Thornydale, Kenney D’s on 22nd Street, and the Lukes on Indian School in Phoenix. All of Tucson is feeling the crunch, not just business but individuals as well. Lukes has desperately tried to keep our prices low enough for hard workers to afford a decent home cooked meal. We appreciate your patronage of local small business and will continue to strive to provide great food to the Tucson and Phoenix area. We are not perfect…sometimes we make mistakes…but we always strive for the best. Our family has put our hearts and souls into this business for over 50 years and hope to be able to continue that tradition. It has never been easy but it is so worth it when we see a smile on a customers face. We hope to see you soon. Thank you.

The owner of Luke’s on Speedway, Jason Amadori,  issued the following notice on Facebook after being locked out:

To our dedicated customers for years of loyalty and coming in our store year after year we are officially closed !
Yes we had some financial situations that we just could not overcome and we were closed down by the landlord today.
Dear Tucson, as the former owner of Luke’s on speedway I want to go on a little rant about how you can help support this community by just doing little things that are necessary to not allow it , to be run by the corporate machine .
Having grown up in the food industry my whole life and owning a restaurant myself I have seen many restaurants for decades close down some of them have been open for many many years and generation of some families that have taken over those businesses to keep them thriving in the community .
1. Things that needs to change. I have seen through the health department and in the city planning board no longer can restaurants be passed down through generations of family without creating a new ownership and need updating on buildings. The city does not allow any more grandfathered in buildings on already established and operating businesses .
What this does it causes new owners of restaurants to have to go in and revamp the building to today standard codes . In turn can cost anywhere from 50 -100 thousand dollars in additional costs to buying an old established business. Now from my understanding , from what I was told by the city is this is their only solution to getting into a lot of the old restaurants and updating the buildings to be more updated fire codes and health code standards. But intern for these businesses to Move on and pass on to generations most people cannot come up with an additional hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the hood system and maybe some floor sinks in the kitchen . But corporations can and I quote what I was told by city inspector is “this is why we like corporations coming to town because they do what ever we tell them to do on a building”
2. The other thing , I know there’s a lot of corporate franchise restaurants coming in this town and it’s new and exciting but every time you go and eat at those places over and over again it chips away at the small business owners of this town . To the point where probably 30 or 40 years from now there won’t be any locally small owned restaurants . It is just like today there are no locally owned mom-and-pop retail stores for the Walmarts and targets of the universe have deleted them from us .
3. Corporate businesses hiking up the rents for local landlords . Local landlords that own commercial spots in this town want the corporate rents so they inflate the rent to a point that it doesn’t make sense or support the amount of business that the small local restaurants can afford !
Small local owned restaurants can never usually in some cases grow to the point to afford those high rent demands . We don’t have the buying capacity to bring our food cost down by still serving you a quality product for a reasonable price.

These are all things that I see happening in Tucson through all the years that I have worked and ran businesses with my family in this town. The point is , try to eat more local, try to support your local restaurants because chances are these local restaurants they don’t want to become the next Chick-fil-A or McDonald’s or KFC most of the local restaurants are just
hard-working people that want to make a decent living to support their family and live and thrive in this community. 

Thanks everyone Jason Amadori

Hang in there, Tucson restaurants. We’re losing too many of you these days.

This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2015.

Bookworm, cat lady, journalism enthusiast.

20 replies on “Luke’s on Speedway Has Closed”

  1. When I first came to Tucson over 22 years ago, I first was introduced to Luke’s. I fell in love with them. I absolutely LOVED their sandwiches! It’s so sad that their having to close. I will miss them.

  4. Barbara, the stores on S. Alvernon, Grant and Ft. Lowell are still open.

    David: Subway doesn’t even count as food, much less a good sandwich!

  6. Seriously @David W, reading comprehension is not your strong suit. It clearly states that they did not pay rent. The city didn’t lock them out.

    I had visited that particular location a few times, and it didn’t hold a candle to the original on Alvernon. I’m not that surprised that it closed.

  7. Why is it that in a city that considers itself “progressive” that small businesses are treated like this? It is the unintended consequences of increased regulation pitted against small business people trying to eek out a living.

  8. I suspect some of you can’t read. It says very clearly that he was locked out for failure to pay his rent. His rant is irrelevant to his closure. If he had paid his rent, then the landlord would not have locked him out.

    I go to the Luke’s on Alvernon, the original Luke’s, and they seem to have no problems staying open.

  9. I helped run a small plumbing company for over 10yrs. The ties between small companies and suppliers was tight. We had to be. The same goes for Tucson restaurants.
    I’ve been here since 1985 and one by one have seen small, locally owned businesses shut down as “big box” stores infiltrated the market. Point in fact…Borders Books (now defunct) and Barnes and Noble, forced the closure of not only many privately owned book stores but music stores as well.
    Blockbuster and Hollywood video stores ( which I believe have at least closed their physical locations) marked the end of the neighborhood video store. Thank God for Casa Video.
    The City of Tucson can’t seem to learn from their previous mistakes…and i doubt they ever will.
    City practices towards small, locally owned businesses is a death nell for us all. It is truly a shame.
    Alas, the lady, she doth protest too much. In a nutshell folks…keep it local.

  10. This is a shame, one more black eye on this city, state etc. The city council and all of the people involved with it have become one big crime family. No offense to the OG’s. Not only do they take the food off of our plates at friendly eateries but they also take away the livelihood of the once proud owners. Places where family and friends used to gather and enjoy with the owners. I remember going to places where they knew you by name. It was great. Now your lucky if you don’t get charged for water. It all has to start somewhere. Usually from the top, and it works its way down. I am sorry to see Lukes close. Its just one more way to wipe away the Tucson Family histories. Who is going to pay for Rio Nuevo Now? Who is going to pay for the street repairs now. Business owners you need to gather together and revolt against this City government and what it stands for and who it works for. Its not you and its not the citizens of this city. The whole thing needs to be cleaned out. Like any representative of the whole it needs to be for the people by the people. Make any sense?

  13. Lukes on Grant, Lukes on Ft. Lowell, Lukes on Alvernon, Lukes on Thornydale and Kenney D’s are all open and very happy to be serving the Tucson Community. Thank you for your support.

  15. Groupon coupons are one of the reasons the small guys fail. they hope it will bring in business and it might but at a a loss.

  18. Not right for the kid to blame the City. I had their food and did not want it again, even with a coupon.

  19. Pammy Culhane, People’s Choice Video Express is still open on Valencia. Casa Video isn’t the only show in town.
    Businesses don’t fail because big chains come to town, they fail because they can’t keep up, or won’t keep up. Just as Borders, Blockbuster and Hollywood failed. Kmart is barely hanging on because they refused to adapt in the 90’s, when it was clear that Wal-Mart had a superior model.

  20. Thanks for all the insults. But I can read. Try reading one more time his #1 in the statement. There is clearly yet another problem with this failing city government.

    And now add to that that nearly half of the intersections/roads in tucson have some kind of sewer/cable/paving project that has locals skipping local businesses.

    It is nearly impossible in this town to move a small business forward.

    Why is that?

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