By Alexandra Mortati | Photos courtesy of Jillana Miller
Jillana Miller, co-owner of MillerButler—a Los Angeles catering operation—grew up in the culinary world, so finding her way into the pizza community was never out of the question. “My father is a chef as well, so I always thought I’d end up in the food industry in some way,” she said. “When you grow up as the daughter of a chef in the industry, you oscillate a little bit. It’s the nature of being in the family business. Food just always continues to find me.”
After some time in the industry after high school, Miller decided to focus on writing. “I wanted to go into writing because I really enjoy it. I was at a point where I was like, ‘I’m done with this food thing.’ I didn’t have a college education, but I’m good at writing, and of course, I write about food. I had submitted a couple of things when a local magazine came to me and asked if I’d like to do a recipe and an article each month. It’s so great when you find your sweet spot.”
Originally from Los Angeles, Miller took a short detour to Nevada. “It was a very young runaway decision to move in with a boyfriend in Nevada,” she explains. “I lasted about a year before I came back to L.A. and found myself in Long Beach. I was finding my way again. I ended up going back to school and working part time at Trader Joe’s. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I started studying nutrition. My father transitioned from restaurants to private chef work, and though I had no real interest, he would plug me in sometimes.”
“I was young and had no interest in working for celebrities,” Miller adds. “My father had one client that just wanted to receive drop-offs, so I started doing that. The client reached out to my father and asked, ‘Who made the food this time?’ So my father tells him it was me and asks, ‘What was wrong?’ The client told him they really liked it and wanted to talk to me about coming in full time.”
While Miller had a lot of experience in the kitchen and working in catering, she was rather green as a private chef. “I fell into this position with Rick Rubin, a big music producer,” she recalls. “It was a blessing to me as it ended up being an educational experience as well as a career. I had to self-teach. I was good, and word spread, and I was able to get a lot of other clients, mostly celebrities and athletes.”
“I did this for 10 years and loved it,” she continues. “I worked with a big client list including Rick Rubin, Mary J Blige, DJ Khalid and Kobe Bryant. Then, around 2018, I decided I was ready for something else. As a private chef, your time belongs to everyone else for the most part, and I wanted something that was my own.”
Falling in Love
Coincidentally, it was then that she met her husband, Ahmad, who also loves to cook. “We fell in love right before the pandemic,” she remembers. “I was making pasta for one of my clients, and he asked to make pasta with me. One of our first dates was making pasta. It sounds very corny, but we kind of fell in love making pasta. We got married right at the precipice of the full-on shutdown. We had a marriage planned for the 23rd of March. We ran to Vegas as we saw everything shutting down. My client at the time was in the hotel industry and went home. We were like, ‘What’s next? If we don’t build a business right now, the pandemic could eat us out of work.’”
MillerButler started as a pasta business. “We wanted to offer packaged pasta in stores. I have a very overzealous personality, and I was going to handroll 100 bags of pasta a week. However, I saw that wasn’t financially feasible and got an extruder. We started selling it and got our brand name but realized we weren’t going to be able to pay the bills selling pasta. We were making fresh and dried pasta and showing them in pop-ups. We developed our website, but knew we had to sell hot food. Neither of us were working as much—I was teaching some classes online, so the pizza came along as a survival tidbit. I have this beat-up old Ooni that they don’t even make anymore, which we’d use in the backyard sometimes. So we were like ‘We can sell pizza.’ Most places were still shut down but there was one market allowing food vendors in Los Feliz.”
Miller and Ahmad reached out and told the market that they could make pizza and pasta. “They asked us to make pizza. We had never done a pizza pop-up before, but we wanted to give it a shot. We had a great time with it, and it was well received. The biggest appeal was that we were going to be able to pay our rent, so we kept doing it every weekend.”
Meanwhile, she notes, “Ahmad fell in love with making the dough. He always jokes that, in the beginning stages, he’d tweak it every time, and I’d be like, ‘What did you do? Wait, this is good! Wait, what did you do?’ I wrote menus, and we would both do prep. Some of the original pizzas on that original menu we just threw together, and they are some of our signature pizzas today. From there, we started really diving into it.”
They both loved the process. “At one point, we started selling pizza in front of our house. We were like, ‘Let’s just try it out.’ The first day we did it, it wasn’t super busy, but we really got to know our neighborhood. We called it ‘Pizza on the Block’ and put flyers around the neighborhood and, little by little, it grew. The next thing you know, people are driving down from the wealthy area for our pizza. We really built our following and community there.”
And they have not slowed down since. “We’ve been grinding really hard, and we continue to grow. The first day we did this pizza called ‘The Bougie.’ It’s a simple, classic combo with fresh pesto made in-house, a cheese blend, mozzarella, arugula, prosciutto and honey. When we used to make pizzas in our backyard, I would always do sweet and savory fun stuff. We come from different backgrounds, so Ahmad would be like, ‘What is with you and that bougie pizza?’ When we do pop-ups, we usually have six varieties and some specials reflecting the season or whatever inspiration we have.”
Eventually, Miller and Ahmad expanded into catering as well. “We do full-service catering with pizza—a lot of weddings, baby showers—so every weekend we have a couple of those. The two revenue streams really support each other. The pop-ups have us out on the street introducing ourselves to the public, and from there we get a lot of interest in ‘Hey, do you do this privately?’ We do a lot of other food, so I’ve been able to find my sweet spot. All the things from my history are able to find a home—the private chef [thing], knowledge of being a chef in the catering industry, and interest in community.”
Tackling Obstacles Together
For Miller and Ahmad, community is everything. “We are a very community-based brand,” she says. “Starting on the block has really helped us grow, and now we are trying to pour it back into the community. Other local businesses started recognizing us and inviting us to pop up.”
With MillerButler’s growth comes more stability. “We can book plenty of venues now, so we are not as weather-dependent as we once were, but it’s still a thing. Winters are a little more challenging. You don’t know what to predict with the winter….The windstorms would be nuts, and pepperoni would be flying off the pizzas. We faced a lot of adversity in working through it. Wind doesn’t put us out of business, but rain puts us out of business. Fortunately, we have found ways to pivot. In California, people don’t go out when it rains. We have a couple of venues where they have an awning, so we do the best we can. For the most part, we are able to do our pop-ups year-round.”
Weather wasn’t the only obstacle for the couple, but they always tackled problems together. “I feel like we are almost a very romantic story, but I try to remind myself it was not easy. I’m just transparent about things. It really requires you to believe in yourself. I know our product is good enough, and this is temporary. There were a few times where my card got declined from Restaurant Depot, and it was really tight. We did not have starting capital. We are not a traditional conventional business. Everything has been on the fly for us. It’s kept us very engaged and very active.
“In a way, it’s allowed us to really establish our business in a real way before we take big, big steps. Every couple is unique, but for us, it might be the best way. I’ve always been really in love with my work. In the past, I’d have boyfriends who gave me a hard time for working too much and not giving them enough attention. Ahmad and I tend to just meet in the middle. It felt great in some ways. We could do real life together. It’s really a blessing. There are times along the way—and in the future—where we have to carve out family time, so we do our best to make it happen.”
Bringing Sofia into the Family
Just as MillerButler was starting to earn recognition, Miller found herself pregnant. “It was a big surprise!” she says. “Ahmad was making pasta as I found out. We were very shocked at first and then excited. It was in the plans, but not in the plans. It took a lot of discussion on our end to figure out how we were going to continue this business, have a healthy pregnancy, and bring Sofia into the world. It required a lot of strategy and pivoting. If we didn’t plan for it and find a way, I could definitely see it falling off, with us having to go back to regular jobs. We agreed that we would have to be OK with things being tight. I had to be OK with cutting back work towards the end of the pregnancy. Being active was good for me. When Sofia was born, Ahmad took on two side jobs and maintained doing the farmers market with our fresh pasta. We would find a pivot, find a hack.”
Sofia has been a big part of the whole MillerButler journey. “When we first had Sofia, we really didn’t have a team. There was a phase when we wanted to start opening again but couldn’t keep up with the three of us, with the baby strapped on. Sometimes Ahmad would get up at 2 a.m. to par-bake 60 doughs. We were able to run a pop-up, just the three of us, like that. Theres the stress of the business, and it’s been important to me that I don’t impart that stress onto her. I grew up in a stressful environment and was trying to rewrite the script. There’s a lot of mindfulness and learning. Embracing instead of resisting. That’s where we thrive.
“This is our life. This is fun, we’re putting good energy into it. We make pizza together. We would bring the pack n’ play to the popups, and Sofia would hang out all day. Now, she’s [older], more like a little kid. When I drop her off for school, she’s like, ‘Mommy, are you going to work?’ She gets excited about it. She sits at my desk, and she asks to work with me, but the toddler time is nuts. It’s extremely challenging not to sugarcoat it. We know we have our vision, and we are down for the cause of building something for our daughter. When it does get out of balance, we check in with one another.”
A big challenge that Miller experienced was post-partum depression. “Having Sofia and the business with post-partum is a very real thing. To be in the throes of business and be confronted by that, I had support from my husband, and we worked though it and I kept working through it. I just have more admiration and understanding of women after going through that.
“I think my work helped me get through it, too, in a way. It started happening right after I stopped breastfeeding, and I think it’s so important to be honest about it. There’s a lot of awareness and support around it now, and women going through it need to have support. They need to be educated about it. It’s important to recognize that you’re not doomed by it. I could see how you think you are if you don’t have the right support. Having all these beautiful things in my life—our daughter, my husband, our business—I knew I had to find a solution.”
A Journey Guided by Intention
Getting to where they are today has been a journey guided by intention. “I write pretty much all of our menus for pizza and catering,” Miller says. “And now we have some new talent on the team as well. If I could make a new pizza every single week, I would, but it depends on where we are with the business. We were at a point where I was like, ‘No specials!’ We have to master the basics before we move on. In every element in building a business, I knew we had to make it to where we could do it with our eyes closed to a certain extent. So, we were at a little bit of a stagnant point for an intentional purpose.
“I do my best to be strategic, and I’m blessed to have some of that foresight for the challenges. I’m a very creative person, and sometimes I understand the challenges of that. How do we make this work on shoestring budget? How do we make this the most efficient process? We do our best to be the most strategic. I ask myself, ‘What did I set out to do, and what are my values in the business?’ Customer service and quality are No. 1. If I have an idea, I need to make sure all components are in place that don’t jeopardize the quality of the product and the experience of the customer.”
For others out there, Miller’s advice reflects her mindset. “My No. 1 thing would be to be prepared for the challenges. Be prepared for adversity. I think sometimes people go into the food industry with this lofty idea, and they don’t understand what it is. It’s physically demanding. It’s mentally demanding. It requires a lot of you. When you enter a business, you wear a lot of hats. My advice would be to ask yourself if you’re willing to embrace that, as the whole body of the journey includes the obstacles. Life happens outside of the business, and you still have to show up powerfully.”
The food industry has changed over the years, Miller noted. “I have been yelled at in a kitchen in a couple of ways, but that’s been happening from a very young age, with my father as a chef. I love that the culinary world is moving away from that. It’s like this woke generation, and I’m in the middle on that. When we are in the kitchen, it’s a sport, so please don’t take it personally. On the same token, is it necessary to yell? Is it effective? If you’re going to break a person down so they don’t perform, that is not effective.”
However, even with progress, there are still moments when Miller finds people trying to take advantage of women. “Asking for [higher] pay is hard because there’s always that hesitation of, ‘Do I deserve it?’ It takes one to know one. It’s about developing that confidence and notion of, ‘I deserve it. I’m not just here to serve you for free.’ We all know about wage gaps. It’s very subconscious and traditional, the, ‘oh, he’s a man’ [mentality]. Being a woman forced me to evaluate the worth of my work. It’s so important as a woman, because if you’re weak about it, they will take advantage of it. They look at my husband and say, ‘How long have you been a chef?’ And we laugh, and he says, ‘Actually, my wife is the chef.’”
When it comes to the future, Miller hopes to find a permanent location for MillerButler. “We’ve had a lot of growth, and I’m really grateful for that. This next step is challenging. We are working in a combination of ghost kitchens and off a cottage license [to make food out of the home] and doing a lot under that. It affects your lifestyle and ability to expand, so that’s our vision for the future—to get into a commercial kitchen and have a storefront. We don’t want a large full-time restaurant because we like a combo model of having a production catering kitchen multiple days a week and mobile teams out. This is going to be part of our daughter’s core memories—making dough in the house every day and having a commercial refrigerator in the house.”
(Editor’s note: As of January 2025, Miller and Ahmad moved their business into an L.A. ghost kitchen facility called Partake Collective.)
Miller is a visionary. She is mindful of her business’s direction, taking a strategic approach to growth and planning, aiming for a sustainable future and legacy that she can pass onto her daughter. She’s supportive, empathetic and empowered, confident in her skills while valuing Ahmad and their life together. Resilient and determined, Miller remains persistent, weathering challenges and the stress of balancing business with family life.
Alexandra Mortati is the marketing director for Orlando Foods and founder of Women In Pizza, a not-for-profit organization that empowers women in the pizza industry to share their stories, display their talents, inspire innovations, and connect with one another and the world. This article originally appeared on the Instagram account for Women In Pizza. Click here to learn more about the organization.
