Taylor Party Bus, Limo & Shuttle Rental

A successful Louie Mueller trip is mostly about timing. The pit opens at 11 AM Tuesday through Saturday and closes when the meat sells out -- usually between 2 and 6 PM, but on a strong Saturday the beef ribs are gone by 1 PM and the brisket by 2:30. There is no reservation system. There is a counter, a cafeteria-style line, and a third-generation pitmaster behind the meat block. The bus arriving at 10:45 AM puts your group at the front of the line when the doors open. Arriving at 12:15 puts you in a forty-minute line and risks losing the beef rib entirely. The recommended order for a group of ten to twenty: get one beef rib per two people (they are enormous), a pound of fatty brisket per six people, half a pound of jalapeno cheese sausage per four people, plus moist turkey, potato salad, beans, and pinto beans. Eat at the long communal tables. The dining room sound level is lower than most Texas BBQ joints, which lets you actually taste what is in front of you. Take the leftovers to the bus cooler. After Mueller, the most rewarding two hours in Taylor are spent on Main Street. The city is part of the Texas Main Street program, and the historic 1880s commercial buildings have been restored with grant money over the past decade. The Howard Theatre at 209 N Main, originally a 1925 vaudeville house, has been restored to a 350-seat performance venue and frequently hosts concerts, comedy nights, and community events; check the calendar before you book the trip and a Howard show can become the evening anchor. The Heritage Museum of Taylor (located in the original 1881 Moody Bank building at 116 W 2nd) is small but free and gives the railroad-and-cotton context that explains why the town's grid looks the way it does. New coffee shops, antique stores, and a small craft brewery scene have opened along Main as Samsung-driven foot traffic grew. For a three-pit Central Texas BBQ tour, the route from Taylor is south on TX-95 about twenty minutes to Elgin (Southside Market and Meyer's Elgin Smokehouse), totaling roughly five to six hours of bus time including the Austin round trip. This tour visits three of the most historically significant BBQ pits in America in a single afternoon. Wayne Mueller's beef rib, William J. Moon's hot guts, and the Meyer's milder pork link give a group three distinctly different versions of Texas smoked meat to compare and argue about for the rest of their trip back to Austin. If the group prefers a slower, less meat-heavy day, the alternative pairing is Taylor → Granger Lake (fifteen minutes east on FM 1331) for an afternoon of fishing piers, the Wilson H. Fox Park boat ramp, or a quiet shoreline walk. Granger is one of the least crowded Central Texas reservoirs and the bus can wait at the lakeside park while a small group fishes or kayaks.