ST. PAUL, Minn. — Steve Baker, vice president and co-owner of The Minnesota Chemical Co. (MCC), will retire Sunday after more than 42 years with his family’s distributorship that provides laundry, drycleaning and coin-op supplies, equipment, parts and service, the company reports.
Baker’s full-time employment with MCC began in 1975, after he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But his storied career with the company began even earlier than that, doing odd jobs at its Milwaukee office, like cutting the lawn, cleaning the office, and working the warehouse during the summer months.
He also spent time in his younger years working at Milwaukee Electric Tool as a parts runner, a student loan bill collector at Career Academy, and at McDonald’s as a fry cook. “I wasn’t sophisticated enough to work the counter,” Baker jokes about his time with the fast-food giant.
Joining a family business can prove challenging for some people, but Baker says he wasn’t worried about working for his father and uncles.
“I never really had concerns about working for my dad, Robert Baker,” he says. “He was easygoing. When I moved to St Paul, it was a bigger operation and there were more people to get to know. I think being in and running a family business is all mostly positive.”
The intergenerational transitions and relationships at MCC have been free from drama, he adds. Although he might sometimes see things differently than partners Mike and Dan do, they’ve never had serious differences. “In many ways, our different personalities and management styles have served our business and customers well.”
Working in a family business can be challenging to “turn it off,” Baker admits, as he has felt a bit like he was on duty whether at work or at family gatherings.
As for the company, he says its main challenge now is the consolidation of customers: “There are fewer accounts to sell to, and the wholesale distribution business model is not as integral to customers’ needs as in the past.”
Baker says his retirement will be bittersweet.
“Believe it or not, I think I will miss the routine and watching all areas of our business function together,” he explains. “I will also miss all of the relationships that I have developed over many years with employees, customers and vendors.”
Baker hopes to do more volunteer work; he is a reading tutor with Reading Partners and a 32-year charter member of the St. Paul Sunrise Rotary Club.
And he’s looking forward to spending more time with family, “especially with our first grandchild, who will be relocating to Minnesota with her parents.”
Baker and his wife of 33 years, Lisa, also hope to spend some time traveling around the country and have planned an expedition cruise around southern Japan and Korea for next year.
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