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August 25, 2025
GREEN BAY – After working at The Plant People for nine years, Rachel Ritter said it was time to take over the reins of the long-standing business on Green Bay’s east side.
Former owners/business partners Loren Hansen and Gale McKenzie passed the ownership torch over to Ritter earlier this month.
“Driving around one day many years ago, I came upon The Plant People,” Ritter said. “I checked things out and became a really good customer.”
After frequenting The Plant People – which specializes in plants, flowers and floral arrangements for home, office and commercial spaces – quite often, Ritter said, eventually, she wanted to work there.
“I was talking to some friends of mine about how I would love to work there someday, and the group of women I was with, it just so happened that Gale’s daughter was present,” she said. “She told me she could get me a job there, so I started working there a couple of days later.”
Ritter said she started at The Plant People by watering plants before eventually moving up to store manager.
“I was working there every other Saturday for a while, and eventually, they needed me a little bit more… and then a lot more,” she laughed. “I love plants and have roughly 300 of them at my home. When I was working there a few Saturdays a month, I’m not even sure I took home a paycheck. I’d use my employee discount and spend all I made buying plants.”
In a joking sort of way, Hansen said Ritter “had a plant problem.”
“We loved Rachel because everything she earned, she gave back to us,” he laughed. “She has helped us over the years and is great with customers. Gale and I always wanted [the new owner] to care about our customers, and Rachel really cares.”
Once Hansen and McKenzie decided it was time to move on, Ritter said they involved her in ownership talks.
“I didn’t think I could pull it off,” Ritter said of owning The Plant People. “It took longer than I wanted because of the courage I needed. Though eventually, Gale and Loren told me they really wanted me to consider taking over.”
From there, Ritter said she researched and started to realize, “I could do this.”
“I just needed to follow certain steps,” she said. “It’s always a sensitive subject talking to people about buying their business, but Loren and Gale seem to be very happy I took over. I was able to secure an SBA loan. It was a daunting process, but I did it right. I love the place – I’m there a lot. Other than my home, it’s my favorite place to be.”
Though there will be a few new “wrinkles and surprises,” Ritter said the changes she plans to make now as the owner won’t be drastic.
“My husband has a web agency, so I have some background in marketing,” she said. “I work closely with marketers and graphic design artists, so I hope to freshen things up a bit.”
A love of plants
Ritter said she’s always had a love of plants.
While attending Kimberly High School, she said her aunt got her involved in horticulture.
“In high school, I would buy plants,” she said. “In the 1990s and 2000s, there weren’t too many places to buy plants. At the time, I was a high schooler working at Subway and not making much money, yet I’d buy plants.”
Ritter said she rediscovered her interest in plants after she started teaching at Second Chance in Oshkosh.
“I had plants all over my classroom, and I did a lot of experiments with them with my students,” she said.
The roots of the operations
Hansen said he graduated from Green Bay East High School and was a horticulture major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an emphasis in business.
He said his first job was working at a 60-acre greenhouse in Ohio.
“I quickly learned my college degree meant nothing to the plants, because the plants still died quickly,” Hansen laughed. “I made my mistakes in the business for about four years on someone else’s dime, but then moved back to Green Bay and worked for someone else for about four years.”
Around the same time, Hansen said he met McKenzie.
“We had this thought about filling this niche of high service for horticultural-type things,” he said. “Our intention was always to do interior plants because we have something called winter in Wisconsin. We started in my basement and eventually rented a few spaces before moving into our current location [at 931 Main St.].”
The Plant People, Hansen said, officially got its start Oct. 17, 1997.
“We started with four watering cans, a two-tone minivan – which means gray and rust – and a maxed-out credit card,” he said. “Thankfully, we progressed up to about 24 watering cans.”
At first, Hansen said their main focus was on B2B commercial clients – until the 2008 recession hit.
“When businesses are laying off a lot of people, they don’t need a lot of plants,” he said. “We probably lost a third of our company over the next few years – to the point where we had maxed out our credit cards and our line of credit. When the gas tank in my pickup truck emptied, we were literally out of business.”
Hansen said, thankfully, the business had receivables up to about $100,000.
“But if people weren’t paying you, there wasn’t much you could do – a lot of people were hurting back then,” he said. “In the 11 years prior [to the economic downturn], we hadn’t lost an account in all that time – it was something I was very proud of.”
During the economic crisis, however, Hansen said, “I got really good at being fired.”
“People would call and say, ‘We’re really sorry, but we have to make a choice [between our business and our plants],’” he said.
Though times were hard, Hansen said there was also a benefit to the recession.
“Real estate had crashed and was cheap,” he said. “We started looking for a potential spot, and we saw a space on Main Street where the price had been reduced. Because interest rates were low at the time, our mortgage payment would be lower than our rent payment.”
After relocating, Hansen said he and McKenzie envisioned the space as a showroom to highlight to people what plants inside buildings could look like.
“People started knocking on the door, wanting to look at the plants,” he said. “We expanded our hours, and all of a sudden, the retail portion of the business was doing well. As things were expanding, we hired Rachel.”
Hansen said today, he would break The Plant People into three segments.
“One third of our business is interior plants, one third is probably special projects [of spring and fall planting] and one third is our retail,” he said. “Our job is to make our clients look good, so how can we bring a ‘wow’ to a hotel or convention center? We do some residential work, but I’d estimate 90% of our work is corporate.”
Hansen said The Plant People believes in customizing – “it’s not a cookie-cutter type of approach.”
“We’ve done dental offices with six or seven plants, while other buildings have hundreds – if not thousands – of plants,” he said. “There are currently about 12 employees, and we have about 100 commercial accounts.”
Time to move on
Hansen said McKenzie is 70 and he is a grandpa – making it, in his words, “a perfect time to step away.”
“It’s a good time to be closer to family,” he said. “More importantly, we also found the right person in Rachel to take things over – The Plant People won’t miss a beat.”
Though he and McKenzie won’t be running the business any longer, Hansen said he will still be around on occasion for the next year to help with the transition.
“Christmas and spring are [The Plant People’s] niches, so I’ll be around more during those times to help out,” he said. “There have been a few situations where [I was] watering a plant and said to myself, ‘Oh, this is the last time I’ll be watering this plant.’ I’ll definitely miss the people – I’ve met so many amazing people over the years.”
Though he will miss the people and opportunities he’s been given, Hansen said it’s time to move on.
“It was always mine and Gale’s dream to do this, and I feel we’ve filled a niche in the area,” he said. “Gale was doing this type of work in Milwaukee, but then her husband got transferred to Green Bay. I think she was thinking she’d just live a quiet life in the area [when she moved here], but [after we met], I talked her into this chaos – I’m grateful for our 28 years together.”
To learn more about The Plant People, visit theplantpeopleinc.com or find it on Facebook.
