#my dad believes in this method of population control where you have a baby to “replace” you and one to replace your partner

[killerchickadee]

Two years ago my dad found out he had another daughter who was in her late 40s at the time. Guess he knocked up a girlfriend some time between divorcing his first wife and marrying my mom and never knew about it. They found out about her because my half brother did a DNA test and it was like, "hey here's yet another half sibling you didn't even know about." Whoops.

Holy shit.

[paladin-andric]

15 for 15 Tag Game

Tagged by @corishadowfang! Thank you, I do enjoy doing these!

Rules: Answer these 15 questions, then tag 15 people.

I’ll answer these as Charles, the rather shy dragonoid magician from Blackheart.

1. What is your full name?

Just Charles. I’m not from a noble family, so I’ve no House name. My father’s a pretty important merchant though, so I guess you could call me “Charles of Falkshire” if there was another Charles present or something.

2. What does your full name mean?

“Charles” means “Free man” I believe. About “of Falkshire”? Me and my father are from the City of Falkshire. Started as a tiny village centuries ago. It’s a really big trading hub now!

3. What are your other names/nicknames?

Professor Parsib calls me “The A-Lister” sometimes. Likes talking about how good my grades are. It makes me feel weird though...

4. What is your gender?

I’m a man.

5. What is your sexuality?

I...don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it. Being of my blood, I never saw humans in...that way. Never met another one of my kind either. I guess it’d be nice to find someone someday, though. Possibly have some kids...dad would probably love to be a grandfather. He always goes on about when I was a baby. He’s very paternal, I bet he’d love to do it all again. That’s...if I DO ever settle with a woman of my kind. I’ve my whole life ahead of me to figure all that out.

6. Where are you from?

Falkshire! I guess I already answered this one by accident. Whoops! Well, it’s a city in the mid-eastern region of Geralthin, a Human Kingdom right in the middle of the continent of Deaco. Lots of rolling grassland, large rivers, oaken trees and sunny days. It’s a lovely place.

7. How old are you?

Twenty years old. I’m almost done with arcane college, but I’m probably going to stay a few more years for the additional honors and training.

8. What is your magic form/what species are you?

I’m a dragonoid. That’s the technical term. Most people just call us half-dragons. As you could guess, we’re half-human, half-dragon hybrids. We look like dragons with the muzzles and the horns, the wings, tail, claws and scales...but we’re the size of men, and stand upright just as they do. We’re...frightening, to the general population. Places of higher learning like schools and The Church are sanctuaries for our kind, or so I’ve heard. Full of folks who understand that we’re not all evil, that we can be good or bad people just like everyone else. The college here for example, no one cares who I am...well, sort of. A few folks were...interested. Curious about me. They enjoyed getting to meet something new. They’re very good people.

Well, another tidbit about my kind...there’s four known ways to be or become a half-dragon. First is to be born as one. One parent’s a human, the other’s a dragon. That’s how I was born. It doesn’t happen very often. There’s...quite a stigma about such things. Second is accidental, from mucking about and experimenting with draconic magic and having it backfire on you. Third’s to drink the blood of a half-dragon. It’s incredibly painful and permanent, and can be done to those both willing and unwilling. It’s also very illegal in most places. Final is to be bathed in the blood of a dragon. The dragon must perform an ancient ritual to do so as well. The accidental and half-dragon methods can shatter the wills of most men, so great the pain is. Dragons can do it very quickly and painlessly.

9. What does your human form look like?

Ah, well actually...! I’ve learned that spell! Disguise! It does allow me to become a human...sort of. In a way, at least. It’s illusionary. I’m still me, just hidden behind an enchantment that makes me look like something else. My body and abilities are unaffected. Since I’ve practiced enough, I’ve learned how to control it well enough to choose my ‘self’. My disguise form is a young human man with brown hair, bronzed skin, and amber eyes. Sort of made to look as close to me as possible. With the copper scales I assumed hair and skin of a similar color would be...more familiar to me, as are the amber eyes. I like the other me, but I try not to be him too often. I try to accept myself for who I am, even if other people don’t like it. Still, it’s nice to just be able to go into town, hit the market, and not get anyone yelling or whispering about me.

10. What’s your aesthetic?

Books, candles, magical winds, an alchemy workbench...robes and libraries.

11. Who’s your best friend?

Professor Parsib! He’s an old kobold who left his tribe to learn from a really old half-dragon sorcerer. After being his apprentice for a while, he became a pretty successful wizard before finally settling down at the college as a professor. All the students were really mean to him, joked about him and laughed at him. He said the first day I started my classes was one of the happiest of his life, since I actually took him seriously. We got to talking after class and...started hanging out during our breaks. He’d teach me some extra stuff and treat me to lunch. He’s the greatest teacher I’ve ever had! He’s always so happy that I want to learn from him, and lends me books and all sorts of manuals on magic!

12. Would you ever get a piercing/tattoo?

No...not my thing. With the dragon scales it’d be quite an expensive hassle anyway I imagine.

13. When are you happiest?

In my room, lying in bed and reading books! Lounging alone in general, really. Anything without crowds. Did I mention I enjoy relaxing alone at home?

14. What’s your biggest secret?

When I was very young...a few folks saw me when I snuck outside. They screamed and called me a monster, said so many horrible things...it was awful. Father reassured me, but for a long time after that...I hated myself. I hated myself for being scary, for being an ugly monster. If father hadn’t been so kind and wise...I might have never accepted myself for who I am.

15. What was your first impression of _[insert character here]_?

Parsib? I’d never seen one of his kind before. He was small, he was quiet, he was leaning on a walking stick...and he looked really sad. I felt bad for him, even though I had no idea who he was or why. I started asking questions in class while no one else did, and...he perked up right away. He complimented and thanked me after class and I found out about how everyone was being mean to him. Both of us being outsiders that the world didn’t seem to understand, that dreaded being out and about with others who couldn’t accept us...I felt like I’d finally met someone who really understood me, who knew what it was like to be me. I knew I liked him after that, and we’ve only gotten closer since.

I’ll tag @kainablue, @lady-redshield-writes, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @sheralynnramsey and @candy687! I’m always keen to learn more about your characters and stories.

[jeremyau]

This Secretive Billionaire Makes The Cheese For Pizza Hut, Domino's And Papa John's

Chloe Sorvino

Forbes Staff

This story appears in the June 13, 2017 issue of Forbes. Subscribe

AN AVALANCHE OF CHEESE pours into the test kitchen at the Denver headquarters of Leprino Foods, the mozzarella supplier to Pizza Hut, Domino's and Papa John's. First, thin wisps of low-moisture mozzarella, then a diced alternative, followed by an "artisanal" version, cut short and wide. Then come flavored cheeses made with a mozzarella base, as well as provolone, cheddar and Monterey Jack.

Cooks bring out a take-and-bake pizza, a New York-style pie and a stuffed crust, fresh from nearly a dozen ovens. Another course features frozen food made with Leprino products, including ham-and-cheddar Hot Pockets, Stouffer's lasagna and Smart Ones baked ziti. Then come the cheese cubes marketed as snack pairings: pear flavor with nuts or Gorgonzola with pretzels. Team Leprino next brings out dessert: salted-caramel-flavored mozzarella wrapped in hot dough, rolled in cinnamon sugar. After an hour, the plastic shot glasses appear for sampling the company's lactose and whey powders, which end up in protein bars, Yoplait yogurt, Pillsbury Toaster Strudel and baby formula consumed by millions of infants annually.

Two floors above this dairy deluge, in a dark-wood-paneled office with white marble floors, Corinthian columns and gold accents, sits James Leprino, the Willy Wonka of cheese. "It's hard for me to believe I agreed to this," the 79-year-old billionaire says. "I really like to keep my privacy."

Getty Images

Camera shy: If you Google James Leprino’s picture, you’ll get fellow billionaire John Malone. This 1978 company portrait is the only known image of Leprino Foods’ founder (right). He speaks with former president Wes Allen (left).

Indeed he does, to a nearly unprecedented degree, given the way he dominates his industry. Leprino has somehow eluded photographers for decades: A Google search picks up photos of fellow Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz and cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder. There isn't a single image of Leprino on his company's website. But after nearly 60 years running the business and more than a decade on Forbes' list of billionaires, Leprino, worth an estimated $3 billion, is finally willing to be interviewed about how his family's grocery in Denver's Little Italy became the world's top producer of pizza cheese--the slightly derisive term competitors use to describe its mozzarella. In all, Leprino Foods sells more than a billion pounds of cheese a year, to the tune of $3 billion in revenue.

Also on Forbes:

The little-known Leprino (he declined to be photographed for this article) rates as one of America's all-time monopolists. He lets others worry about fresh mozzarella balls and pizza that taste like they were made in the old country. His laser focus on large pizza chains has allowed him to control as much as 85% of the market for pizza cheese and somehow sell simultaneously to a set of customers — Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesars — that try to cut each others' throat in every way that doesn't involve where they buy their milk products. Dominating the market has its advantages: He's able to invest in technology that no run-of-the-mill dairy farmer ever could, resulting in more than 50 patents —and an estimated 7% net margin, which dwarfs the dairy-industry average.

Cody Pickens for Forbes

Leprino Foods is the world's largest mozzarella company with sales of more than $3 billion annually.

As the diamonds of his watch bezel shimmer on his wrist, Leprino takes out his beat-up black leather wallet, removes the rubber band holding it shut and reveals a card featuring the four company watchwords: quality, service, price, ethics. "I've got everybody keeping one in their pocket," Leprino says. "The company was growing so fast they were missing this important message."

Quality is listed first intentionally. It's easy to mock his product (Frankencheese, anyone?), but Leprino Foods is one of the few dairy giants that have never had a recall. Every Monday at 11:30 a.m., Leprino walks down to the test kitchen along with two dozen of his most trusted executives for the weekly Monday Melts meeting like the one I attended. The executives test samples of the cheese produced for some 300 clients in 40 countries and check every complaint received the week before. "Your employees have got to know you're not a phony," he says. "They've got to believe in you.

"I support what's going on, but I don't try to lead it," he adds. "My job is to hold them responsible for doing what they said they're going to do."

He wasn't always so hands-off. While acknowledging his "genius," numerous industry executives paint Leprino, in his younger days, as an "aggressive" leader who wasn't above visiting individual franchise owners to pitch his technologically advanced cheese. But very few will go into detail, and fewer still will attach their name to their comments. One pizza entrepreneur puts it this way about the man who owns 100% of this mozzarella giant: "Jim Leprino is a very powerful man."

Leprino Foods

Mike Leprino Sr. stands in the original Leprino family shop selling Italian specialties.

LEPRINO'S OFFICE BEARS testaments to his roots, including a black-and-white photo of his mother on her wedding day at age 16 and a bronze relief of James and his father rolling fresh mozzarella balls. Leprino Foods' genesis lies in the mountains of southern Italy, which Mike Leprino Sr. left in 1914, at age 16. Accustomed to high altitude, he settled in Denver; without much of an education or the ability to read and write English, he began farming. More than three decades later, in 1950, he finally opened a grocery store to sell the produce he grew. Italian specialties followed, including fresh ricotta, mozzarella balls and ravioli made by James' sister Angie.

Meanwhile, James, the youngest of five children, noticed his classmates spending free time at neighborhood pizza joints. After graduating high school in 1956, he started working with his father full-time and shared a revelation: "Pizzerias in this part of the country were buying 5,000 pounds of cheese a week," he recalls. "I thought, This is a good market to go after, so I did." In 1958, after larger chain grocery stores had forced the Leprino market to close, the Leprino Foods cheese empire started with $615.

Leprino Foods

Mike Leprino Sr. makes fresh mozzarella balls in the original Leprino Foods store.

The timing couldn't have been better. That same year, the first Pizza Hut opened, in Wichita, Kansas. A year later, Mike and Marian Ilitch opened the first Little Caesars, outside Detroit. Another year went by, and Domino's began delivering pizza, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Frozen pizzas, introduced after soldiers returned home from WWII craving slices, were also gaining popularity. After two years in business, Leprino Foods was delivering 200 pounds of block mozzarella a week to local Italian restaurants.

Leprino realized he needed to learn the science behind making cheese on a mass scale. But with a young daughter at home and another baby on the way, he didn't have time for college. Instead, he hired Lester Kielsmeier, who had run a cheese factory in Wisconsin only to find out that it was sold during his stint in the Air Force during World War II, because his dad believed he'd been killed in action. "When Lester came, I went downtown to the junkyard and I bought a couple bigger cheese vats to make it look like we were really in the business," Leprino says.

Leprino's first coup came in 1968, when Pizza Hut was looking for a supplier that could help it cut costs while standardizing portions. After hearing that shredding 5-pound cheese blocks in the franchises was time-consuming and inconsistent, Leprino Foods started selling frozen, presliced blocks. For the first time, pizza-makers could simply layer a few slices onto each pie.

While Kielsmeier made the cheese, Leprino fixated on efficiency. He quickly realized he was dumping half his raw ingredients into the river in the form of whey, the calcium-rich liquid left over after curds are strained. Inspired by the 1964 World's Fair in New York, Leprino traveled to Japan to meet with scientists using milk proteins derived from whey to help the Japanese population grow taller. More than a half-century later, Leprino Foods remains the largest U.S. exporter of lactose, a by-product of sweet whey, and retains a large market share in Japan.

On the cheese side, Leprino hustled to satisfy Pizza Hut, which went public in 1972 with around 1,000 stores and, at its peak in the 1990s, accounted for 90% of Leprino's sales. Pizza Hut franchises would sometimes wait too long to thaw the presliced mozzarella and reported that their cheese would crumble, so Leprino Foods responded with its first major breakthrough: a preservative mist. The scientists there soon realized that this method allowed them to add flavors such as salted caramel and jalapeño. They could even make a reduced fat "cheddar" by using a mozzarella base and then misting on cheddar flavor and orange food coloring. Leprino Foods' production rose sixteenfold, to 2 million pounds of cheese a week.

Leprino Foods

Mike Leprino Sr. stands in front of the original truck he used to deliver fresh mozzarella to local Denver customers.

Just as his timing ahead of America's pizza boom proved lucky, so did his location in the center of the country. In the 1970s, Wisconsin and New York were producing most of the country's milk, but California's nascent dairy industry often priced milk lower. Leprino had the foresight to engage in some arbitrage, locking California dairy farmers into multi-decade contracts at rates that were often above-market locally but below-market nationally. Over the next two decades, Leprino Foods also signed sweetheart deals with co-ops that eventually became the Dairy Farmers of America, securing a lasting milk supply with the country's largest dairy co-op; the company also purchased and renovated some of the older dairy plants, cutting off the options for competitors who wanted to process milk. As Jerry Graf, a former cheese buyer for Pizza Hut, notes, "Jim was always one step ahead of the game."

LEPRINO'S MOST IMPORTANT innovation, ultimately, was marrying science and sales — a combination that met the needs of the four biggest U.S. pizza chains during a period when they were growing exponentially, launching one of the greatest turf wars in the history of American food.

The first key was something called "Quality Locked Cheese"--shredded and individually frozen portions--which Leprino introduced in 1986. Leprino's competitors, still mostly run by Italian-Americans with strong immigrant roots, sniffed. "They didn't believe that was what should go on top of their grandmother's pizza recipe," says Ed Zimmerman, a 30-year pizza-industry veteran. But the franchise-friendly process quickly became the industry standard, both for consistency and scalability. With a patent in place, Leprino made himself indispensable. Graf left Pizza Hut, which was still growing, for Domino's and brought Leprino's business with him, as that chain surged from 200 outlets in 1978 to 5,000 in 1989. Meanwhile, Little Caesars, with more than 3,000 stores, was growing 25% a year with its deal of "Two great pizzas, one low price." And by 1991, Leprino had become the exclusive supplier for Papa John's, which launched in 1985.

Leprino was able to grow with them all by putting them in silos, granting each company its own specs and then troubleshooting as necessary. "We treat every customer like our only customer," says Mike Durkin, a former Pepsi executive who came on six years ago to run day-to-day operations as president of Leprino Foods. "We don't discuss Papa John's business with Domino's — or anybody else's." Domino's agreed to an exclusive relationship in 1996--the contract was just one page. "It was more of a handshake than it was anything else," recalls Michael Soignet, a former vice president of supply chain at Domino's.

Cody Pickens for Forbes

Leprino Foods' ribbon cheese, which is made at its Greeley, Colorado plant.

When Pizza Hut began using a hotter conveyor oven, Leprino Foods changed the formula so the cheese wouldn't burn at higher temperatures. As delivery-focused Domino's expanded, Leprino's head cheese maker, Lester Kielsmeier, manipulated the product so that it retained its fresh-out-of-the-oven look and taste longer. When Papa John's insisted it wanted cheese without fillers--eschewing a new Leprino product that contained some — the big cheese didn't take it well. "His reflected sense of self is his patents, his business," Papa John's billionaire founder John Schnatter says of Jim Leprino. "That really means a lot to him. When I said I didn't like it, he took it personally." Within two months, Leprino switched Papa John's back to the previous blend. "Jim came at me and said,'It's going to cost you three more cents a pound.' "

Price has long been Leprino's biggest advantage, and a large one since cheese accounts for about 40% of a pizza's cost. Leprino's scale begat better prices, which begat more scale. And that scale also led to cost-saving breakthroughs that Leprino's fragmented competitors could neither catch up with technologically nor fight in patent court. "They are a biotech company that is wrapped inside a food business," Zimmerman says.

For example, in the 1990s, Kielsmeier realized that just as the cheese changed when ingredients were sprayed on at the end, certain additives used early in the process could affect how cheese melts--from how big and how brown the bubbles get to how many are on the top of the pie. On the manufacturing side, Kielsmeier cut down the cheese's aging period from 14 days to just four hours, which multiplied the company's production capabilities while cutting costs significantly.

"I would tell people,'Lester is the man that made me rich,' " Leprino says. Notably, though, Leprino never gave Kielsmeier any equity. While Leprino got rich, Kielsmeier — who came to work every day right until his death at 95 in 2012--would have to content himself with being very well paid.

FOR JAMES LEPRINO, the perks of being a billionaire are relatively muted. Yes, the company owns three private planes — a Gulfstream G450, a Bombardier jet and a small 1980 commuter plane — and his house in Denver's affluent Indian Hills suburb has 11 bedrooms, to go with an 8,000-square-foot vacation home in Scottsdale, Arizona. But he's more likely to pick up a hammer than call a repairman: Leprino, who has been known to operate a forklift at the factory, has also personally bulldozed trees around his Colorado home. A devout Catholic, he goes to church every Sunday and donates to charity anonymously. And the immigrant's son has no intention to retire, ever. "My success is a fairy tale," he says.

Leprino's succession plan is simple: He'll split ownership between his two daughters, Terry, 57, and Gina, 55, who have been on the board for years but won't take day-to-day roles. "I don't want them to be living a corporate life resentfully," Leprino says. And for now he'll continue to ensure that Leprino cheese is on as many American pizzas as possible — as well as Asian and European ones (Leprino has a joint venture with the U.K.'s Glanbia Cheese).

America's fifth-largest pizza chain, the take-and-bake Papa Murphy's, remains in his sights. Cofounder Robert Graham says Leprino visited him at least three times to try to get the company to sign on, selling the technology above all else. "It didn't perform well for our pizza, which is cooked in a home oven," Graham says. "Because of the moisture content, you could see the sauce under the cheese. It evaporated." Yet Leprino executives continue to press.

And while Little Caesars uses other vendors--industry insiders say Leprino isn't exclusive with Little Caesars, in part because the chain's blend uses Muenster cheese, too — Leprino president Mike Durkin predicts that Little Caesars will eventually succumb. "Would we want more? Probably the answer is yes, and it'll come at some point," he says.

Cody Pickens for Forbes

The storage warehouse at Leprino Foods newest plant in Greeley, Colorado.

Meanwhile, Leprino will pursue new markets. Leprino has invested $600 million in a factory in Greeley, Colorado, that specializes in "ribbon cheese" — bulky 2.5-pound blocks that are popular among frozen-pizza companies. It's also created an in-house "innovation studio," designed to ride the coattails of food trends. One creation, Bacio ("kiss" in Italian), is catering to artisanal-pizza-makers by offering mozzarella with a kiss of buffalo milk. It's Leprino Foods' most expensive cheese — and its fastest-growing.

Leprino is also rolling out the company's first direct-to-consumer product, a whey protein powder called Ascent, which will have a dedicated wing at the Greeley facility. While Leprino still produces whey protein as a by-product of making cheese for its clients, Ascent is filtered straight from raw milk to protect key proteins and vitamins that help aid muscle recovery. Leprino hopes that will be an edge in the $6.6 billion-and-growing U.S. protein market.

There is plenty of history to remind Ascent's team of their roots. Ascent's space sits atop the original cheese factory's loading dock and warehouse.

"I remember the first day that we had this set up," says Mike Arnold, who is overseeing Ascent's launch. "Jim Leprino walked in here and was like,'Ah, this reminds me of the old days.'" A new, fractured market, primed to be dominated.