After 43 Years and a Doritos Taco Pizza, Roadrunner Goes Dark on Hancock

Refried beans instead of tomato sauce. Sour cream. Lettuce, tomato, black olives, cheddar. Then a fistful of crushed nacho cheese Doritos on top.

That was the taco pizza at Roadrunner. That was the whole personality of the place in one box. And as of the weekend of Aug. 29, 2026, you cannot order it anymore.

Gone in a single Facebook post

Roadrunner Pizza & Pasta sat at 3113 N. Hancock Ave., in the Venetian Village shopping center. Carryout and delivery only. No dine-in, no seating, no waiting for a table with a buzzer that never buzzes. You called it in, you drove over, you took it home. That was the deal for more than 40 years.

Then on a Saturday evening, the family posted the news. Closing. Immediately. "With a heavy heart," they wrote, calling it "a sad day, but change is a part of life."

No long explanation. No reason given. Just a nudge to the people reading it to keep small local places alive, and one line that has been rattling around Colorado Springs ever since.

"It's rough out there."

That is the part people keep coming back to. Not a lawsuit, not a rent number, not a landlord feud. Just four words from a family that ran the same shop since 1983 and finally decided they were done.

What Roadrunner actually was

Business records list Charles Zebrowski as the owner, with the corporation incorporated Oct. 1, 1983. So do the math. That is 43 years of grating cheese and answering the phone.

And I mean grating cheese literally. Roadrunner made a point of it. Their own blend of mozzarella, smoked provolone, and cheddar, grated in house. Dough made fresh daily. Sauce made fresh daily. The menu straight up called out the competition: "no wimpy skimpy corporate franchised pizza."

That is a family talking, not a marketing department. You do not write "wimpy skimpy" in a boardroom.

The menu was deep too. Thirty-three toppings. Beef ravioli, spaghetti and meatballs, shrimp Alfredo on the pasta side. Delivery in roughly a three mile radius, which if you lived inside that circle, you knew. You had a Roadrunner order memorized.

And here is the thing that gets me. In an old strip mall, this carryout spot outlasted the chains. The franchises came and went around it. Roadrunner just kept making dough every morning for four decades. Then it was gone in a weekend.

This is not one restaurant. It is a pattern.

If Roadrunner were the only name on this list, you could chalk it up to a family that was simply ready. It is not the only name.

Rock City Cafe announced its own closing, with a last day of Sept. 11, after 11 years at 1812 Dominion Way. Salsa Brava is gone. Jax Fish House on North Tejon Street is gone. So is Atrevida Beer Co., which was Colorado's first Latina owned brewery. That last one stings on principle alone.

That is a lot of history walking out the door in a single year, in a single city.

The Colorado Restaurant Association has been saying the quiet part out loud about 2026. Extremely tight margins. Rising operating costs. Hiring that keeps getting harder. Put those three things together and the math on a small independent gets brutal fast. You are not competing with the pizza place across town. You are competing with rent, labor, and a supplier invoice that went up again.

So when Roadrunner says "it's rough out there," they are not being dramatic. They are giving you the state of the industry in four words.

Why this matters past the taco pizza

Look, I care about this stuff for the obvious reason. Great food is worth mourning. But there is a second layer here that is worth your attention.

When a place like Roadrunner closes, a piece of a strip mall goes dark, and that space does not always fill back in with another 43 year family business. Venetian Village loses an anchor that pulled in phone orders and foot traffic for four decades. Old commercial real estate on corridors like Hancock lives and dies on tenants exactly like this one. Reliable, established, the kind of neighbor that keeps a center feeling alive instead of half empty.

That is the ripple most people miss. One family retiring their pizza oven is also a vacancy sign in a shopping center, and vacancy signs have a way of multiplying.

Hayley and I have watched enough Front Range corridors shift over the years to know the pattern. The independents go first. They feel the squeeze before anyone else because they do not have a corporate parent absorbing the losses. When they say it is rough, believe them.

What you can actually do

You cannot save Roadrunner. That ship sailed on a Saturday night. But the family's own last request was not sentimental filler. It was practical. Support small local businesses. Now, while they are still open.

So order from the carryout spot near you before it posts its own heavy heart goodbye. Tip the family run pasta joint. Show up on a random Tuesday, not just when the closing announcement hits and everybody suddenly remembers the place existed.

Forty three years. Fresh dough every morning. A taco pizza held together by crushed Doritos and pure stubbornness.

Roadrunner did the work. The least the rest of us can do is not wait for the Facebook post.