#the prices of milk when selling to factories and grocery stores in my country is literally lower than the prices of water. its that bad.

[ursulaklegay]

what? I can't talk about the US, but please don't dismiss the farmer protests in europe without informing yourself. do you seriously think "rich plantation owners" go out onto the street to protest? there do exist industrial farms in europe, but these people are lobbying in the government. the farmers protesting outside do so against low food prices and stricter regulations that would hurt their harvest, which would mean death for many small farms as they are already severly struggling money wise. in spain, the protests went against import fought for a focus on local production.

farming in europe is generally looked down upon, small farming is payed very very badly even though grocery prices keep rising, at least in my country farmer is one of the jobs with the highest death rate, particularly suicide. Europe (and everywhere else) desperately need measures to support small, local farming and discourage industrial production – acting like all farming is corporate hurts the cause and it gives you an excuse to not pay attention to what's actually happening and who you're really buying from.

It is so disingenuous when supermarkets have "grown by: Farmer X" on their packaging because it's like, I'll be looking at a pack of strawberries grown by farmer x and he'll actually be the managing director of a fruit farm that employs 2,000 people as pickers!

[willpowerbutch]

Gay Oil: Chapter 1

A fan fiction by Tom Rob Smith

It was another frigid morning in Soviet America. Outside Eli’s front door, grey evergreens stood stark against the white pall of clouds, and the winter sun rose behind them like the communists had risen to power when he was only a boy: red, large, and full of nuclear threat. Being one of the denizens of New Trotskyville, it was Eli’s life-long habit to take this route to work at the silver mines – past the jutting cliffs, on threadbare government-issue slippers, clutching his coat to his chest while quietly whistling along to the morning broadcast. In the distance, there was the rustling of canvas as the breeze sent ripples through a mining encampment; and, there was the sun, mounted high now above the oil wells, the only part of the picture that wasn’t drab and lifeless. It sparkled in the sky in a way that reminded Eli of his phenomenal gayness.

It bears discussing for a moment just how gay, for Eli was not merely homosexed, but fruitilicious in a fragrant and radically soft way. Often, in his teenage years, he lounged on a garbage heap outside his house, smooth chest shining in the afternoon light as an electric fan blew photographs of Christopher Reeve between his thighs. Like this he languished for hours but to rise at the sight of an approaching straight man, whereupon he would hoola hoop nakedly into the center of the yard. “Why don’t you come have a sip of my water, baby boy?” he would call to them, only to be greeted by righteous beard frowns. Of course, homosexuality was subsequently outlawed, and Eli had to learn how to walk with his legs spread apart. He couldn’t count on his free hand how many times he had narrowly evaded the police at abandoned country restaurants; other times, he spotted them at the market among the cucumber-melon-scented bath soaps, just waiting to snap a pair of handcuffs over the carefully exfoliated wrists of a gay. Thus, he had been impelled to smell like peppermint social alcoholism for years.

He approached the silver mines, dropping his bag in the dust as he noticed the silhouette of a muscle daddy struggling on the ground. That’s my job, he thought, taking offense at the sight of a real man sprawled in the mud like a health spa happy ending. Pam Grier didn’t die for this amateur bottoming bullshit. He approached the homo-queer daintily, his oral sex nose sniffing fast, and admonished him. “Brother, you’re ruining your facial. This is not Arkansas.”

“I’m going to murder you,” said the daddy raising his head, his left eye twitching. “I’m going to drain you dry like a vanilla milkshake. Now bend over and adjust me.”

It being in Eli’s nature to follow grunted instructions, he spread his legs far apart and lowered his generous package to the ground. “Daddy,” he murmured, butterfly-kissing the man’s belt loop, “I’m this town’s least arrested psychic, and I think it would reassure the community if you visited my jiu-jitsu sex clinic. I do readings for the modest price of a second-hand butterscotch latte. Will you come?”

“Readings?” The daddy appraised him with extraordinary spectacularness. “I can make you give me one for the cost of Ben Whishaw’s box office value: I pay you nothing, and you gratify me in the privacy of an empty movie theater. Hmm? What do you think of that?”

But before Eli could stop licking his fingers long enough to reply, an eerily British Sylvester background dancer trundled toward them, weighted down by his ‘70s streetwalker mustache and lack of current television exposure. “Daniel!” exclaimed the girl, “I am your brother, Danny! I accept cash!” He fell weeping to the man’s feet, smearing mud along his naked inner thighs while all the studio executives in the world showered him with discontinued LSD gumdrops from a canon the shape of Ben Hur’s nipples. Then, his slim frame quivering with exertion from pretending to be a top, he vanished into the newly-risen, Rami Malek-esque sun.

“What are you running from, my boy? You, too, could get paid for shitting on Andre Bazin,” Daddy Daniel laughed after him with undeniable method acting. He then turned his attention back to Eli, who was busy braiding his leg hair. “Speaking of Will Smith, have you seen my sympathy son, Alex? He was here a moment ago, but he must have left to turn into a dick cowboy.”

“I have not, Daddy. We should check for him in a BBC nepotist’s syphilis dreams,” concluded Eli, lighting his crack pipe on a parking ticket.

Thus, the pair set out, Eli retaining his coral purse and Daniel genuinely bleeding out of his ears as the scent of Marxist documentarianism drifted to them on a wind of discrete builder farts. Eli’s excitement throbbed at the smell of flatulence, and as they sashayed across the rugged, biceptual terrain, he began to dream of one day gay-marrying a former child. Pulling his mink tighter, he led Daniel into the midnight grocery store where he had hosted his first erotic bathtub monologue, stopping in the entryway to reapply his favorite lipstick, Autocannibalism Red. As he sifted through the contents of his bag, Eli felt the daddy’s screwed, twitchy eyes turn on him once more, undressing every last stitch of his fishnet tights from him, and he froze. “Was there something else you wanted to ask me, Daniel?”

“You know what I want, Eli,” said the older man, flush and barely able to control his rage erection.

Being a dignified girl, Eli smirked. “I’ve already told you my price, Daddy Daniel.”

“Not that, you residual muck of one of my delicious milkshakes. Your bath oils, Eli,” he growled, indicating into Eli’s purse. “I want to buy them. Name your price for those.” Daniel withdrew his checkbook, but Eli merely wagged his finger.

“I’ll give them to you for free when Eddie Redmayne stops winning Oscars for whispering,” he replied. “You can keep your glorified chocolate milk. My fluids are my sheep, and I am their shepherd.”

At this, like a volcano of passionate incredibleness, Daniel Plainview burst into a groundbreakingly American display of angry sniveling which put to shame every dramatic performance ever. “ELI!” he screamed, and the bristles on his face stood up as high as the ones in his trousers, “If you do not, in accordance with your victimhood fetish, act like a murdered soap opera heiress and sell me your bath oils for this very reasonable 100 rubles, in the name of my sexually innocent math bitch, Alex, THERE WILL BE BLOOD!” Daniel reached out to strike Eli with his art conniption when, inexplicably, his hand was stayed. “Whitney,” he breathed.

The public radio had changed songs, and it was now Whitney Houston that played in Orwellian warehouses throughout New Trotskyville. Eli’s ears became a cesspool of optimism and ‘90s drumkits. He stared on in fabulous judgment as Daddy Daniel took her photo out of his breast pocket and licked it. “Her eyeshadow looks like Sean Penn’s divorce,” he told the daddy in disdain.

“Which ‘era’ of Whitney do you like, Eli?” asked Daniel, cracking his knuckles.

Eli was aghast. “The one where she hasn’t been relevant since Beyoncé happened, Brother. You really listen to this abstinence charity music?” The older man’s eyes bore into him, filling him with frightful, kaleidoscopic visions of leotards. Eli shifted uncomfortably. A cold silence stretched between them. “I suppose… I can see why you like her voice, Daddy Daniel,” he acknowledged at length, bowing his head, “since you, too, sound as if dental surgery turned you into a radio pervert.”

The man’s entire body shook with incredible extremeness. “Beyoncé is nothing but a post-apocalyptic Kate Bush. A lottery hoax,” growled Daniel. “The Dark Ages are over, Eli, and the power bottoms lost. I own the factory where you pedal your sex calendars now. And if you don’t sell me your bath oils right here, in this renounced nacho bar, I will break all your pussy power bracelets and feed them to my sad Abercrombie virgin, Alex.”

Eli was stunned silent. The house lights began to flicker out, slithering across his face like an ill-fitting condom. Finding no apology from Daniel, he made the sign of the Z and vanished into the club’s back room, where he screamed and flailed around like the girl from The Exorcist if she was sick on chocolate wine. When at last Eli regained his composure, he changed into his racist Dalai Lama costume, preparing for another afternoon of preaching to children about the importance of politically-gay movie extras.

TO BE CONTINUED

***

About the Author

Tom Rob Smith, screenwriter for the acclaimed television documentary London Gay and author of such novels as Vintage Suicide Communists and Momentary HIV, is a rampant fabulant whose gay suffering hard-on has inflamed the manfully heterosexual attention of the editorial staff of Manly Men! Magazine. This fan fiction is the first part of an ongoing media promotion of Paragon Shag’s new political action dinner group, Feel Dirty When You’re Seduced By Rentable Firemen Into Performing Celery Porn Again (FDWYSBRFIPCPA), the aim of which is to discredit the evil teachings of gay transgenders such as Paul Dano, Ben Whishaw, and Rick Perry.

[icelandicandies]

INTERVIEW OF VÍNBERIÐ MANAGER

_I am curious if you know why are there so many candy factories around reykjavik area, or in iceland ? There are 5 of them in total. And I feel like, from my foreigner's eye (I come from France), it is a lot of production here, there is a lot of attraction towards candies and sweets. What is your point of view on that ? _ I don't know, I think it is maybe connected to like imports, it was like, difficult to import, food and candy. So I think it is because of that we have so many manufactures ourselves. _ Because they are importing as well a lot of goods ? _ Yes, yes today yes. But like, the oldest one are maybe from what, 1932 or something like that, so it is like early last century, it was difficult to import, and then we started to manufacture ourself our candy.

_ But do you think they were using more local available goods then ? Or was it also that they imported the sugar etc.. ? _ Imported sugar yes, yes. Like, we don't have sugar cane here or.. so we have to import it. _ So that was more a matter of making the product here, because it preserves better or.. ? _ … _ Rather than if it's imported ? Because I am trying to figure out why are they making it here, with imported goods, and why not just importing everything from Danemark or.. I don't know ? _ Yes, I think it is just in chocolate, you always have to import like, the basic things, and then it's like the sugar was easy to import, but maybe not a whole candy bar or… like that. So it's like yeah, we import the goods like… _ cocoa beans, or cocoa mass ? _ probably mass yes, not beans. And then like, in the milk chocolate you have the milk here… _ yes, so the milk is from here ? _ yes, yes. So it's more difficult to import it with the milk, then the chocolate would be ruined. So we started to making it here. _ So about preservation. _ yes, yes.

_ And what is your point of view on icelandic people relationship to candies today ? _ … _ Do you sell a lot to icelandic people in the shop, or is it a lot of foreigners ? _ hum, it's maybe 80% foreigners yes. But we have old customers, like customers here, for many years, they come here.

_ Because the shop was first open in … ? _1976. _ So that's pretty old for like, a shop in Iceland ? _ Yes, yes. It was a grocery shop to begin with. _ And then it shifted to… _ Yes, to candy and chocolate. _ And how did that happen, what were the reasons ? _ Laugavegur changed, and there are always fewer icelanders, like local people, and then the supermarkets opened, and people would rather go there than to, you know, the store of the corner. _ Is it your parents or ? Is it a family business ? _ No I am just manager. _ But, at some point, someone decided that it's going to be a candy shop ! What was the reason, do you know ? _ It was a suggestion from a friend, who also imported candy, so it was yeah. And they are still friends today. Because it was a hard time for grocery stores here, and today they are like few grocery stores, like small ones, they are just few left. _ Yes everything is owned by Hagar, or kind of. _ Yeah…

_ Do you see a lot of attraction to icelandic candy in the shop ? because I see it is really separated, there is this corner with icelandic candies, and the rest is, the rest of the world. How do people feel about this ? _ The icelandic section ? _ Yes. _ Good, because if you come here and are looking for souvenir or icelandic candy, and want to try it, it's really easy to say yes it's this section there. Rather than having it in like all the store, because yeah. So it's just like, icelanders go to the foreign side, and the foreigners go to the icelandic side. _ Because they can find the candies in Bonus or ? _ Some of them, some, but we try not to have the same. _ There are some specific stuff for sure yes. _ Some of the things we have to have but, it's politic like, which to have here, and also like because of Bonus and Hagar, they are really difficult. _ So you are in communication with hagar ? About the selling ? _ No, it's just like, sometimes, they are selling it lower price than we can buy on… _ Because they have this monopoly… _ Yes, they say like "if you want it here, we want to sell it at this price"

_ But I feel like you are more apart from this distribution, and this more a quality shop, with quality goods and stuff. _ Yes, yes, there are stuff that we have to have here, like "necessary" things. _ what do you mean by necessary things ? _ Hum, like chocolate plaques, 150g, we have to have it here, you can also get it in Bonus. _ But, why do you HAVE to have it here ? _ hum, because it's like the basic things of icelandic candy. _ Noi Sirius thingy ? _ Yes, in the white package.

_ I am also curious : there are a lot of boxes with icelandic landscape pictures, when did that arrive ? Is it something recent ? Or has it been always here ? _ Traditionnal ones. This is the box that we have been buying for christmas, yes. _ Because it looks like a tourist thing _ No, it is icelandic, it like a box with a beautiful picture. Old people like, yes, if you want to give something for a 80 years old person in Iceland, you would buy that. _ Oh, I thought it was very much a tourist attraction, but not only. _ No, no… _ And tourist tend to buy it ? _ Yes, they do ! And it's like, we have it here all year around. But like in Bonus you can get it before christmas.

_ I was very surprised in the candy alley in the Bonus, to see only icelandic brands, like Freyja, Goa, Noi Sirius, everything is icelandic, almost. And, that is something that is very curious for me, but what is, again, your point of view on that ? Because I feel like it's quite specific, and Iceland, I mean they are not producing cocoa beans or sugar, so… That is quite specific to iceland, all of these brands ! _ yes, when you say it, it's true. I've never noticed it, because we have the mars bars, snickers bars, something like that, but mainly it's icelandic yeah. I think it's just like a tradition to have your own candy, your favorite candy, and you have to like, it's like the basic things that you need. And they have it in Bonus yeah, basic icelandic candy that you love, so yeah.

_ And how would you describe the icelandic candy ? Maybe the archetypical icelandic candy ? _ It really depends on what you like. Licorice is very popular, licorice and chocolate are very popular. Licorice, chocolate and caramel ! _ It's like THE combo ! _ Yes, this combo is not easy to get, in other countries. _ No, I mean, coming from france I never see licorice and chocolate, that's really a thing ! And we do have some french brands in the shop but mostly it is from germany or, USA, or… But we don't especially have a french candy that we buy on a regular basis. That's a bit different. What does people buy the most in icelandic candies ? What is the thing that everyone is buying in your store ?

_ In my store or in Bonus, it's two totally different things ! _ Yes, but in your store ? _ Here, in my store, what do people buy ? Licorice, yeah licorice and the traditional chocolate. But yeah, per pieces, most of the pieces we are selling out, it's the truffles. _ Ah ! and are you producing that yourself ? _ No, they are from Riga Lituania. Yes they are really beautiful and everything, but if you look at like sold pieces each day, they are always the highest one. _ And they are high quality chocolate ? _ Yes they are handmade _ And how do they travel, not being ruined ? _ Oh just in boxes we order. _ Do you think by boat or plane ? _ Yes. Yes.

_ And do you have an idea of what would be mainly bought in Bonus in the candies ? _ I don't know, lava bites ? or ayze _ From Goa boxes ? _ yes, I think so.

_ I was talking about sugar in Iceland with the guys from Omnom yesterday, and they told me that icelanders are really into sugar. I am curious, what would be your point of view on that ? Sugar in general ? _ yes, maybe. Now we have a special tax on sugar, it have been for a few years. I don't know, yeah. But like… Yeah maybe… It's difficult. Because like, 50 years ago, it was not much sugar here, but you put like a lot of sugar in your coffee, and when you were preparing skyr, you put a lot of sugar in it, because it's not the skyr that you know today. So the basics of icelandic traditional food don't have sugar, but today almost everything you buy has sugar.

_ I feel like there is an american influence towards it ? When they came with the hotdogs and stuff, just brought the sugar, or sort of. _ yes, it's like, in yogurt and everything is full of sugar. But it's also, if you go, for instance in your country everything is also full of sugar. _ Yes it's the same all over the world. _ yeah, so I don't think that we are more into sugar than other countries.

_ No probably not, that's for sure. But I just noticed this really cultural candies. I mean this shop is quite a good illustration of how icelandic are regarding candies. I mean they love it, they like to buy specific candies that they like, it means something really specific, whereas in France it's not much hum… _ You don't have the sweets on Sundays ? Like bonbons, cakes ? _ No we don't do that. It's more something like a cake, big… _ Small, oh big yeah ok _ And then you take a slice, but people don't really do that anymore, but the candies are mostly for kids. And kids eat that for birthdays, birthday parties, but then it's gone. We don't have so much culture around it. Also this Nammiland day, in Hagkaup, this is really amazing, everyone is going and buying their stuff, I was really surprised ! _ yeah, but like, I lived in Spain and they have their sweets on Sunday, small cakes or big cakes, like a dessert, after sunday meal. And like in Spain and in France, it's like really sweet food, it's too sweet for me. So it's like… Yeah i don't think like… Icelanders are more for sugar.

_That's interesting to hear. _ Yeah, because you know, when you buy some types of bread in france it's like really sweet. _ Yes, the pastries and everything _ yes, really sweet. And like, in the morning you get your croissant, they are SWEET. _ Yes, we eat sugar in the morning, that's for sure.

_ How do you buy your products ? _ We import some things ourselves, but mostly we buy it from wholesalers.

[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.