Austin Entrepreneur Launches 'Twisted Texas Tours'

AUSTIN, TX — One of the key entrepreneurial attributes in launching a small business is fearlessness, especially staring a company in a thriving marketplace where competition abounds. By that measure alone, Meagan Fritts is already a corporate success story.

A recent Austin transplant from a small town in Arkansas, Fritts last month launched Twisted Texas Tours, a touring business offering 2- to 2 1/2-hour excursions to some of the capital city's most interesting stops. The company offers two signature tours showcasing quintessentially Austin venues, the Comedy City Tour and the Live Music & Brewery Tour, offering visitors and locals alike one-of-a-kind experiences described as being suffused with "...risqué comedy, unusual histories, live music and, of course, the option to bring your own adult beverages."

How fun is that?!?! The tours enables patrons to discover Austin weird, wacky and wild sides in a city that has as unofficial mantra the charge to "Keep Austin Weird."

"Twisted Texas’ Comedy City Tour is an unforgettable musical-comedy extravaganza on wheels," company literature describes. "Led by sidesplitting guides, this tour shows off Austin like it’s never been seen before. Scandalous gossip, dark twisted history, and of course, all the ways Austin is 'Keepin’ it Weird' are discussed between quips and musical numbers on this rolling variety show."

The ability to have tapped into such Austin-centric enjoyments further attests to Fritts' business acumen, yet she's no stranger to the business world. Twisted Texas Tours is an offshoot of her first business, Access ATX launched in 2015 that offers sightseeing trips to the Hill Country with stops at the best barbecue joints, restaurants and vineyards across the bucolic landscape.

During a recent telephone interview with Patch, Fritts — young, single and career-driven — said she was lured to Austin's uniqueness when she moved here in 2011. While enjoying her new environs, she also took to the task of market research.

"I'd ask people what there was to see in Austin," she said, describing the research she conducted prior to launching Twisted Texas Tours. "I wanted to see all the weird stuff. The weird stuff doesn't just happen on demand," she soon found. "They're random occurrences rather than tourist attractions."

With that spontaneity in mind, she began targeting the most interesting spots to include in the tour in a city dotted with fun and eccentric venues. The aim was to pick places where a good time (read weird, but in the best of ways) was sure to be had, with revelers arriving at the various spots on modified school buses, in full party mode. Along the way, local bands entertain the guests, with the stops spaced apart accordingly to allow musicians to play their songs uninterrupted until the next stop.

"If I couldn't make the weird come to the tours, I'd create the weird," she said with a laugh. "That's what we're aiming for."

And so, Twisted Texas Tours was born on Sept. 23, and has already built an audience. This November, Twisted Texas Tours is offering safe transportation from downtown Austin, leaving from Waller Creek Pub House, to New Braunfels’ Wurstfest.

Other than such special events excursions, the two distinct tours offered by Twisted Texas Tours are:

• Comedy City Tour: The tour departs from Irene’s at 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and runs for two hours with a break in the middle for restrooms and beverage refills at the favorite local watering hole, Lazarus Brewing. Due to the adult humor and adult libations (did we mention this tour is BYOB?) the age minimum for participants is 13 years old.
• Live Music & Brewery Tour: Twisted Texas’ Live Music and Brewery Tour puts the party on wheels and combines two of Austin’s favorites, music and beer. This two-and-a-half-hour tour departs from Waller Creek Pub House every Saturday at 2 p.m. and takes guests to two local breweries for tastings and a behind-the-scenes look at Austin’s booming craft beer industry. In between brewery stops and beer samples, a local band rides aboard the tour bus providing entertainment and showing guests why Austin is the ‘Live Music Capital of the World.’ Lucky for riders this boozy, jammin’ tour is also BYOB and has an age restriction of 21 or older.

Fritts also is not stranger to leading tours. After graduating from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor's degree in advertising and public relations, Fritts earned her certification in Tour Management from the International Tour Management Institute. She worked as a tour director at Collette Vacations for five years, leading groups through six South American countries as well as across the U.S. and Canada.

During her talk with Patch, Fritts said she also gleaned some insight into the human condition along the way to becoming an entrepreneur, having interacted with so many people from South America to North America. "I just think I'm very blessed to be in a field that makes people happy," she said of her livelihood. "But I saw that we're also the same," he added, referencing the various clienteles she's encountered. "We all want to rise healthy children and fall in love."

Fritts' own wanderlust makes her an ideal person to head a company with a business model centered on adventure. In picking Austin to live and launch her entrepreneurial dreams, she was lured by the city's uniqueness and the unspoken tactics of its residents to work hard and play hard.

"I Googled 'best places for single twentysomethings' to live," she said when asked how she chose Austin. "I graduated college in the midst of the Great Recession, the newly minted thirty-year-old said in referencing early salad days underpinned with some measure of financial anxiety. "I wanted to pick a city with warm weather, a lake, a young people scene, and Austin fit the bill. I moved sight unseen, with no job and no friends. It was a bit daunting. But as you grow, you change."

Do we mention that Fritts fearlessness?

Departing from the Waller Creek Pub, 603 Sabine St., the upcoming Twisted Texas Wurstfest Pass costs $49 and includes the following:

• Admission to Central Texas’ most popular polka, sausage and beer-filled German festival.
• Round trip, BYOB-friendly transportation from Austin to New Braunfels (lunchbox sized coolers only).
• Live music entertainment onboard, provided by a local band.
• Twisted Texas drink specials at Waller Creek Pub House before and after the ride.
• Complimentary bottled water on the bus.

The Wurstfest tour is scheduled Saturday, Nov. 4, from noon to 5 p.m. and 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. and again on Sautrday, Nov. 11, from noon to 5 p.m. and 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. To purchase tickets, click here.

For more information on Twisted Texas Tours, click here. For those less willing to take a walk on the wild side, check out the tours offered at ATX Access by clicking here.

>>> Uppermost image: Megan Fritts, all courtesy photos by Ben Porter Photography