Mr. Baxter came to the United States from Jamaica as a student, eventually earning a PhD in horticulture from the University of Minnesota. After working as a research engineer and manager for a decade, he formed his own company, Cut Fruit Express, specializing in the cutting, packaging, and distributing of fruit and eventually, vegetables in 1997. He built the company from a 10 employee, 8000-square-foot production to a multi-million dollar business with 60 employees in a 46,000-square-foot facility.
He has also held his company up to a high level of corporate citizenry and has worked hard to improve the lives of his employees, many of whom are immigrants themselves.  He provides home buying assistance for his employees and post-secondary education assistance for their children. He makes the land on the company’s property available to employees for cultivation of vegetables and fruits which can be used to feed their families and supplement their income. Additionally Cut Fruit Express is a sponsor of Project Sweetie Pie, an organization that teaches urban gardening to North Minneapolis youths in an attempt to teach life skills and combat childhood obesity. As a child in Jamaica, Mr. Baxter helped his family cultivate coffee and cocoa. This helps him relate to the rural backgrounds of many of his immigrant staff and feeds his desire to support and promote this style of urban cultivation to his employees and to his community.