When Phil Tulkoff says that something isn’t rocket science, he has the experience to back it up.

The 63-year-old spent the first part of his career working in aerospace engineering for NASA and then transitioned into computer consulting. But for the past two decades, Tulkoff has been doing something zestier: running his family’s condiment business, known especially for its horseradish.

Tulkoff Food Products, based in the Holabird industrial area of Baltimore, manufactures condiments under its own name and for other national brands. Tulkoff’s grandparents, Russian immigrants Harry and Lena Tulkoff, started the business as a produce shop almost a century ago.

Their prepared horseradish, a spicy root vegetable, became their star product, and they decided to concentrate on selling horseradish products. The company has offered its best-selling Tiger Horseradish Sauce for more than 50 years. But it offers many other condiments as well — the chipotle aioli is Phil Tulkoff’s personal favorite.

The company has passed through the hands of numerous relatives over the decades. And there was a brief period when an outside person ran the family business before Phil Tulkoff took over in 2005.

Now, Tulkoff uses his experience as an engineer to automate the factory process and quickly get to the bottom of problems.

What’s something you wish people knew about your business?

I’m the third generation to run the business. My grandparents started it and then my father and my uncle’s generation ran it for years. There was a time when some outsiders ran it, that was right before me, and then I’ve been back for 20 years.

There’s obviously a legacy and a pride to it to make sure the business continues and, you know, protect the name and protect the brand.

Everybody knows this company for horseradish. That’s where we started. We still do lots and lots of horseradish, but we do so much more than that. I think the one thing I wish people knew was that we do lots of other products and food services that go into restaurants, hotels and caterers.

Over the last 13 years, we’ve moved into co-manufacturing, where we make other people’s products for them. We do a lot of nationally branded retail products on store shelves around the country that don’t have our name on them. We can’t even talk about who we make things for, but I think that’s probably the one thing that’s interesting that people might not know.

Do you have a favorite part of your day working in the business?

Favorite part of my day … besides lunch? I don’t know. I mean, I like the opportunity to walk the factory floor sometime during the day. I’ll just kind of stroll around and see what’s going on, say hi to everybody and get the pulse of what’s happening in the building.

Getting stuck in the office all day is no fun.

What is the appeal of doing business here?

[My grandparents] originally opened a grocery store in New York City, and then at some point, they moved to Baltimore. We’ve been in Baltimore ever since.

Being a manufacturer, there’s a lot of infrastructure in our factories to make all this work, and it’s not so easy to up and move.

The good part is that we’re near I-95, which makes trucking very easy, and we do use the port a little bit. There is also a pool of employees that are local. I mean there’s a fair number of people that live pretty close to the factory.

Are there any challenges to doing business in Baltimore?

There are definitely challenges with infrastructure. We still have some issues where the power will go out when there’s a bad storm or some kind of interruption. Dealing with the Baltimore City water department is not easy.

The other downside is that the real estate tax in Baltimore City is double what the real estate [tax] is two blocks away in Baltimore County.

What’s your biggest ambition?

When I started, we were probably 95% food service, which means we were selling to the big distributors and wholesalers like Sysco, and the US Foods and Performance Food Group Company, who are then delivering to restaurants and caterers. That was a lot of eggs in one basket, and we wanted to diversify.

We got into co-packing, and it’s been very successful. It’s half the business now.

I would like to get more into chain restaurants, where we’re doing custom sauces and dressings for them. We do a little bit of that now, but that’s one area that I’d really like to expand on.