When your business is a tribute to beloved family members gone too soon, failure isn’t an option, even in a pandemic that has virtually gutted your ability to bring in customers on a large scale.
After a decade of wowing family and friends with elaborately spooky back yard Halloween haunts, Jason Bach and his daughters, Jennifer Vegtel and Nikki Edger, were looking forward to opening an escape room in the West Valley.
Their dreams were put on hold while the family grieved the loss of Ms. Vegtel and her 5-year-old son, Logan, who were killed in a chain-reaction crash in Phoenix on Dec. 11, 2018.
In 2020, Mr. Bach and Ms. Edger finally were ready to move forward, and opened Twiisted Riddles in Ms. Vegtel and Logan’s memory Feb. 8 in the Shops at Serafina, 633 S. Estrella Parkway, Suite 120, in Goodyear.
Mr. Bach, who owns 90% of the business and Ms. Edger, who owns 10%, were prepared to slowly build a following. The family lives near Loop 101 and Interstate 17 in Phoenix but chose Goodyear because there aren’t many escape rooms in the West Valley.
They were hopeful that in addition to families and friends looking to use their analytical skills to solve puzzles and riddles to complete room missions, Twiisted Riddles would draw businesses, schools and others for work outings and team-building events, and become a place for private celebrations like birthdays and graduations.
Then, COVID-19 hit.
“Business just started to pick up, and there goes the momentum,” Mr. Bach said March 20, a week after the March 12 shutdown that changed everything for businesses across the state.
Twiisted Riddles, which had two complete escape rooms and one in progress, closed for five weeks, then reopened with a limited schedule allowing a single two- to eight-person group in for a one-hour sessions, with time in between groups to allow the crew to clean and disinfect.
As the months progressed, Mr. Bach and crew completed their third room and can overlap groups in separate rooms.
Participants can choose between three escape scenarios:
• In Endline, participants must stop the sabotaged Twiisted 633 train before it reaches the end of the line and crashes;
• In Cursed, they must break the spell of an angry fortune teller who cursed the group over an insult; and
• In Dr. Stitch, the scariest of the three, the group has been abducted by a madman bent on skinning them alive if they don’t escape his lair.
Summer traffic was slow, he said, but momentum has built again since September.
“It’s been much better. I’m not hemorrhaging money now,” he said. “I’m just slightly bleeding.”
Family and friend groups remain the primary clientele, Mr. Bach said.
“I’m not getting the team-building, the work outings or holiday parties yet,” Mr. Bach said. “That should be 30% to 50% of my business, and I’m getting one a month.”
The family invested $90,000 in the business, building the handicapped-accessible rooms and creating the escape scenarios themselves. Because it didn’t open until 2020, Twiisted Riddles wasn’t eligible for CARES Act grants or pandemic-related emergency assistance loans.
Mr. Bach works full-time in the business and has three part-time employees, including Ms. Edger, who works full-time for Discover and comes in Wednesdays and Thursdays, and his son-in-law, who comes in on Saturdays. The escape room is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but the family’s goal is to add more employees and have enough traffic to open daily so they can continue doing what they love.
To build the business despite the challenges of COVID-19, Mr. Bach has approached area dealerships and businesses, promoted specials and gift cards on social media, and recently took out an ad in Clipper Magazine. Customers also can follow a leaderboard on the website, twiistedriddles.com to see how long it took for successful teams to make their escapes.
Regardless of what the virus and the new year throws at them, the family is moving forward with Dr. Stitch, Cursed and Endline.
“It’s going to take an awful lot,” to force Twiisted Riddles to close,” Mr. Bach said. “This is for Jen and Logan.”
Editor’s note: The Goodyear Independent is running a story on a local business as part of a project on YourValley.net highlighting the people behind the companies and their struggles in the ongoing pandemic. Kelly O’Sullivan can be reached at kosullivan@newszap.com or 760-963-1697.
Kelly O’Sullivan News Editor | Litchfield Park& Goodyear @AzNewsmedia
Kelly O’Sullivan is a longtime journalist who joined Independent Newsmedia in January 2020, after returning to the Valley from Twentynine Palms, California, where she worked for eight years as a communications specialist for the U.S. Marine Corps. When she’s not covering stories of interest to Litchfield Park, Goodyear and other Southwest Valley residents, she stays busy rediscovering Arizona and photographing its spectacular landscapes and wildlife.
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