Also run

php artisan route:clear

Possibly... If {phone }is a string '/search' would match. I always add a condition to make sure the correct type is matched.

Route::get('/search','SearchController@search');
Route::get('/{phone}', 'DealsController@show')->where('phone', ['[\d-]+']);

no joy surely if search matches it would pick up the search route as its specific and any other string would match the wildcard

local env works production doesn't I think this is the key

@futureweb can you show the Route service provider?.

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Support\Providers\RouteServiceProvider as ServiceProvider;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

class RouteServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * This namespace is applied to your controller routes.
     *
     * In addition, it is set as the URL generator's root namespace.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $namespace = 'App\Http\Controllers';

    /**
     * The path to the "home" route for your application.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    public const HOME = '/home';

    /**
     * Define your route model bindings, pattern filters, etc.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
        //

        parent::boot();
    }

    /**
     * Define the routes for the application.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function map()
    {
        $this->mapApiRoutes();

        $this->mapWebRoutes();

        //
    }

    /**
     * Define the "web" routes for the application.
     *
     * These routes all receive session state, CSRF protection, etc.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    protected function mapWebRoutes()
    {
        Route::middleware('web')
            ->namespace($this->namespace)
            ->group(base_path('routes/web.php'));
    }

    /**
     * Define the "api" routes for the application.
     *
     * These routes are typically stateless.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    protected function mapApiRoutes()
    {
        Route::prefix('api')
            ->middleware('api')
            ->namespace($this->namespace)
            ->group(base_path('routes/api.php'));
    }
}

Route Service provides looks correct. If it working on local but not in production may be issue related to the case sensitive of file name etc

Remove use App\Http\Controllers\DealsController; from your web.php.

Turns out default NGINX config was to blame !

What? Are you using different servers between dev and production?