Denver’s biggest cheese edged his way onto this year’s list of America’s richest 400 people, helping raise the combined worth of Colorado’s wealthiest to $21.2 billion.
James Leprino was ranked No. 258 of Forbes magazine’s 400 richest, with a net worth of $1.3 billion. He joined his father’s north Denver cheese-making company, Leprino Foods, at age 18. Now 68, Leprino has transformed the family business into the world’s largest producer of mozzarella cheese, counting Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s among its customers.
Leprino’s father, Michael, emigrated from Italy to Denver in 1914 and did truck farming in Globeville before his land was buried beneath an Interstate 25 cloverleaf interchange. He then opened a grocery store and began making ricotta and scamorza cheese in the back.
That small neighborhood operation on West 38th Avenue took off. The company now estimates its annual sales at $2 billion.
Lou Polidori, whose family has operated a sausage-making business in north Denver for more than 80 years, remembers James Leprino’s tireless ethic.
“Jimmy is undoubtedly one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known,” the 88-year-old Polidori said. “When he was just a young boy, he would get up real, real early in the morning and peddle ricotta.”
Michael Leprino ran the family business until his death in 1972, when James took over. Since then, James and his brother, Michael Jr., have turned the company into the go-to place for the pizza industry, supplying most of the mozzarella for national chains.
According to Forbes, nine of Leprino’s manufacturing plants process up to 6 million pounds of milk per day – nearly 5 percent of the U.S. milk supply.
The company pours $10 million annually into research and development, and invested $600 million over the last four years into technology improvements at its plants, according to trade magazine Dairy Field, which ranked Leprino the No. 8 dairy processor in the country.
Despite all his successes, James Leprino is reluctant to step into the limelight. He could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
“Mr. Leprino is extremely private and would just as soon that nothing’s written about him,” said Mike Reidy, a senior vice president at Leprino Foods.
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1378 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
