Colorado’s mozzarella magnate built a net worth of billions

Colorado billionaire James “Jim” Leprino, who stored a low profile regardless of being one of many state’s wealthiest residents, died on Thursday, June 19 at age 87.

Leprino wasn’t one to work the social circuit, grant media interviews and even enable his photograph to be taken. However he took the Leprino Meals Co., now generally known as Leprino, from a small native provider of handmade cheeses to the world’s largest producer of mozzarella.

“Jim was identified for his unwavering dedication to the folks of Leprino, at all times prepared to supply steerage, assist and mentorship. He had a profound affect on numerous lives — together with his household, mates, prospects, suppliers and the dairy trade,” his household, which declined an interview, mentioned in a joint assertion issued final week with the corporate.

Anyone who orders home-delivered pizza has seemingly tasted Leprino’s handiwork a number of occasions, particularly the “stretch” in cheese he helped create. And for health fanatics who wouldn’t dare put a slice to their lips, the corporate can also be a number one producer of whey protein, a liquid byproduct of creating mozzarella that was thought of a waste product till Jim tapped its worth as a protein supply for the whole lot from toddler method to post-workout smoothies.

His father, Mike Leprino Sr., immigrated to america from Potenza, Italy, in 1914, and Jim was one in all 5 kids. After working numerous jobs, Mike Sr. fulfilled his retirement want by beginning a household grocery retailer in 1950. It was situated alongside thirty eighth Avenue and Shoshone Road within the coronary heart of what was then Denver’s Little Italy.

Among the many many items supplied as much as the close by paisani within the Sunnyside neighborhood had been handmade ricotta and scamorza cheese.

Grocery retailer chains knocked many unbiased shops out of enterprise, and Leprino & Sons was no exception. Jim, who labored at his father’s retailer in 1956 after graduating from highschool, got here up with the thought of supplying cheese to the fast-growing pizza enterprise.

Because the nation’s love affair with pizza grew, Leprino Meals capitalized on it by supplying cheese to the businesses that equipped the pizzas. But it surely wasn’t only a case of excellent timing. A take a look at plant constructed subsequent to the corporate headquarters on the unique retailer website continually reworked cheese formulation to fulfill the particular wants of particular prospects, leading to greater than 50 patents.

Provided that the cheese can characterize about 40% of the price of a pizza, the power to provide it persistently in massive portions and at a decrease price helped pizza increase in recognition.

Pizza Hut, primarily based in Wichita, Kan., was an early buyer of the Leprino Cheese Manufacturing Co., the predecessor to Leprino Meals, which finally grew to become an unique provider to Domino’s Pizza, a pioneer within the residence pizza supply market, in 1996. Many of the largest pizzamakers are prospects, together with Little Caesars and Papa John’s, as are producers of things starting from Scorching Pockets to frozen dinners.

The corporate grew by producing cheese the best way prospects needed, with zero public meals recollects and at a worth that beat the competitors, cementing decades-long relationships. One in every of its greatest developments within the Eighties was a course of that would convert contemporary milk to pizza-ready cheese in 4 hours.

Forbes, in one of the only interviews Jim Leprino ever granted, known as him the “Willy Wonka of cheese.” Enterprise success resulted in monetary success. Forbes ranked Leprino this 12 months because the state’s sixth wealthiest resident with a $2.1 billion web price. Regardless of having solely a highschool schooling, he was the world’s 1,736th richest person, per Forbes.

Within the days of fast progress, Leprino had playing cards printed out for workers with 4 core values written on them, the identical ones utilized by his father on the household grocery retailer —  high quality, service, aggressive worth and ethics.

Leprino employs 5,500 folks and provides prospects across the globe, and the state has benefited in quite a few methods, together with offering dairy farmers a prepared market. The corporate constructed a plant in Fort Morgan in 1994 that employs 380 employees who convert 2.3 million kilos of milk a day into cheese and different dairy merchandise.

“Sometimes, a few of us are lucky throughout our lives to fulfill people who will ceaselessly go away a useful legacy and footprint within the communities and lives they contact. Jim Leprino was a type of who, I really feel, sparked constructive momentum with improvement efforts for the (the town) when he selected to construct his first Colorado cheese manufacturing plant in Fort Morgan greater than 30 years in the past,” mentioned Sandy Schneider-Engle, an financial improvement specialist with the town in an electronic mail.

She added that a number of different firms adopted Leprino, together with the Dairy Farmers of America, creating an influence that “will proceed to be felt on this Colorado neighborhood for a few years.”

Leprino Meals went even greater in 2011, changing a former sugar beet plant in Greeley to a manufacturing facility that employs 500 employees who convert 7 million kilos of milk a day into cheese.

However as followers of the tv sequence “Succession” witnessed, pressure and feuding can observe success at a family-run enterprise. Jim tried twice, in 2008 and 2012, to purchase out the quarter share managed by his older brother Mike Jr. for $250 million. Each occasions, his gives had been rejected as too low.