James Leprino

 ( 1937 Births ) 

The company rapidly grew alongside the American taste for pizza. When Pizza Hut began rapidly expanding in 1968, they turned to Leprino, who came up with a way of avoiding the traditional cheese shredding process in the store and layer on frozen product instead, simplifying the process and reducing cost and labor. Leprino Foods became the largest manufacturer of mozzarella cheese in the world, over which James Leprino reigned as CEO and Chairman. It supplies major pizza chains including Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's and Little Caesars, and controls up to 85% of the U.S. pizza cheese market.

The company made many innovations to accommodate the needs for industrial-scale pizza making, including the introduction of spray-on additives that change the behavior of cheese in the oven, allowing the pizza chains to differentiate their product from each other. They reduced the natural aging process for mozzarella from 14 days to a mere four hours. They created a "preservative mist". They made cheese that could be baked on pizzas even while the cheese was frozen. Laprino credited Lester Kielsmeier, a cheesemaker from Wisconsin, who ultimately became the lead author of more than a dozen Leprino Foods patents. "I would tell people, ‘Lester is the man that made me rich,’", Leprino said.

In October 2017, his net worth was estimated by Forbes at US$3.1 billion. In 2022, his two nieces, who hold a 25% stake in Leprino Foods, filed a lawsuit claiming they, as minority shareholders, were disfavored in terms of profitability and global management. The nieces requested Leprino Foods be dissolved and its assets be distributed among all shareholders. A Colorado judge ruled out dismantlement of the company, but their claims of inequitable treatment could go forward.