It could be Colorado’s largest company that nobody has heard of.
Low-profile Leprino Foods likes it that way.
Leprino is the world’s largest maker of mozzarella cheese with, arguably, the world’s smallest public-relations budget.
Leprino family members and top company executives almost never talk to the media. The firm is privately owned by the Leprinos and does not report financial or operational results.
Chairman and chief executive Jim Leprino 73, shuns the spotlight.
When a cheese-industry trade publication named Leprino its company of the year, the firm said it would accept the honor only on the condition that Jim Leprino’s picture not appear on the cover of the magazine.
“From a family point of view, there has never been a desire to take the limelight,” company president Larry Jensen said in a rare interview.
Leprino Foods and its family owners are philanthropists, but they don’t like to talk about it. A company spokesman would disclose no information about donations.
IRS filings made by a charitable foundation run by Jim Leprino’s brother, Mike Leprino Jr., show 2009 assets of $4.2 million and contributions of $1.5 million. The largest recipients were the University of Colorado Hospital Foundation with $1.15 million and the Denver Art Museum with $228,490.
The company’s spare-to-the-bone, circumspect approach has been evident during the approval process for its new plant in Greeley. Disclose the information required, but nothing more.
“I worked pretty closely with these guys, and I liked them,” said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s community-development director. “But I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about them personally.”
