The best employee
Maureen Robinson had yet another big idea: single-serving birthday cake in a jar. The creative brain behind Milsean Chocolates of Aldergrove, B.C., she’d already dreamed up almost 30 confections, from s’mores with homemade marshmallows to award-winning butter crunch. But before she took her latest brainwave to the market, she had to sell it to her right-hand man. And he wasn’t buying. True to form, he just had to make sure the boss’s big idea was not a big flop. Could Milsean sell enough cakes to justify the cost of the launch? Could the production line deliver and still meet demand for butter crunch? A bank manager could not have grilled her harder than her very own numbers guy, whom she affectionately calls “Ol’ Blue Eyes” — Rob Robinson, her high school sweetheart and husband of 27 years. “He makes me do my homework,” she says. “It’s annoying and frustrating sometimes. But at the end of the day, everything’s better because of him. How can I complain about that?”
When the bottled birthday cake went to market last year, it was snapped up by consumers hungry for novelty. Milsean, whose name means “sweet things” in Gaelic, had proven once again that Maureen’s imagination and Rob’s bottom-line rigour go together like hazelnuts and Belgian chocolate. On financial matters, she answers to him. But make no mistake: Milsean is hers, a passion ever since she started making butter crunch part-time back in 1991, when she had two children at home and a part-time catering business. The candy, a just-for-fun sideline, sold so fast that she made it her focus. Now she sells hundreds of thousands of boxes every year through her own gift shop or by mail. Sometimes Rob speculates about packing it in to start another business or to travel. But Maureen, at 46, sees many years ahead for making treats. “I can’t imagine selling my baby,” she says.
In old-school family businesses, Pop ran the show while Mom tended the books and files. No matter how much troubleshooting “the little woman” did behind the scenes, her husband was the public face of the enterprise.
