Links in the Fast-food Chain,
and Other Connections

Spring/Summer 2005

In 1952, like many other entrepreneurial spirits at the time, Neal Baker lept into the fast-food hamburger business, still in its infancy, but growing. Baker had seen his Muscoy-boyhood- school-bus-riding-pal, Glen Bell, open his own burger stand in San Bernardino, and that lit a small fire under him. They knew the McDonald brothers and had witnessed firsthand the success of their venture, originally set up in San Bernardino in 1948 — the same year Bell began. So in 1952 Baker opened his own restaurant on Highland Avenue in San Bernardino, the town that was in some ways ground zero for the explosion in the franchise fast-food industry.

“All of these places really started here,” says Baker, referring to the business innovations introduced into the food industry in the ’40s and ’50s, “and San Bernardino never really gets any credit for it.” Specifically, he’s speaking of all the early ties the city has with the fast-food chains. Besides being motivated by Bell’s success, Baker helped erect that first building of Bell’s on Mt. Vernon. Competition being much friendlier in those days, Bell had also asked Baker if he could have one of Baker’s employees, Ed Hackbarth, who Bell put to work at his hamburger stand in Barstow. Later, after buying Bell’s interest in the store, Hackbarth re-named it Del Taco. Another young man, one John Galardi who had once worked for Bell, sat down with Bell and his wife one day and concluded that hot dogs could sell well, too. In 1961, he named his stand in the L.A. suburb of Wilmington Der Wienerschnitzel. The next year in Downey, Bell launched Taco Bell — a good 10 years after rolling out those first tacos at his Bell’s Hamburger stand down on Sixth and Mt. Vernon.

Much of Baker’s life has been about such connections. They’ve spawned a million opportunities, and opportunities are what he and his wife, Carol, had in mind when, last spring, the long-time supporters of Cal State San Bernardino’s Coyote athletics program and founding sponsors of CSUSB’s Coussoulis Arena gave $100,000 in stock to Cal State’s premiere scholarship fund, the President’s Academic Excellence Scholarship (PAES) program. “Neither one of us went to college,” says Baker, founder and owner of Neal T. Baker Enterprises, which owns Baker’s Burgers, Inc. “We wanted to give somebody the chance to go, but didn’t have the means,” Carol adds. “The money wasn’t available to us when we were growing up.”

Open to the highest-achieving students in San Bernardino County, the Bakers’ gift takes the PAES scholarship fund to another level, giving students who qualify, the Bakers believe, the chance to chase down that college degree that was much less critical when he graduated from San Bernardino High School. “In our day it was in to have a high school diploma. What can a high school diploma get you today?” he asks pointedly. A major shift has happened since then, he says. “And you know what changed everything? One word — computers.

“In our day we wrote down orders,” he says. “People talked. People were yelling out orders to the cooks. Today it’s quieter. They punch in orders on the register, and that sends them to the cooks.” All of Baker’s business ventures have had to grow and modernize that way. But he and his wife have held onto one tradi-tional way of doing things. To this day they’ve not learned how to turn on their computers. When they come into his Hospitality Lane office, they have someone do that for them.

Even though it was “easier” in his day to go far without a college degree, still it’s remarkable what Neal T. Baker has built. His 35 restaurants are fixtures about San Bernardino and Riverside counties. He also was a co-founder of Business Bank of San Bernardino, which later became Business Bank of California. Last year, Union Bank of California acquired the bank. He also builds custom homes.

The Bakers have contributed much to CSUSB over the past decade. Their gifts have benefited CSUSB athletics, the Coussoulis Arena and Scoreboard Sponsorships, the Dave Stockton Coyote Golf Classic, the Annual Fund and the Alumni Association. Baker received CSUSB’s Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship Lifetime Achievement Award for 2004, and in 1996 he
was named CSUSB’s Arrowhead Distinguished Executive Officer.

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