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Secretive Billionaire Makes The Cheese For Pizza Hut, Domino's And Papa John's
- nodesocket 9y agoThank god for the Willy Wonka of cheese.
- alaskamiller 9y agoReminds me of the last boss I worked for that works diligently since high school to build a hundred million dollar business in an unsexy industry with factories across America. Aside from growing up in silicon valley, he's the only other inspiration that rich is attainable and accessible. Unflashy and unassuming, he doesn't try to draw press, hired older folks to be the faces. It's just like watching someone that's really good at playing this video game called spreadsheet. Patiently stacking and stacking day in and day out the same thing, but bigger and bigger. consistency and scalability... Leprino made himself indispensable That's all it is.
- burntrelish1273 9y agoNolan Bushnell spoke in my physics class at Leland HS, trying to get students interested in entrepreneurship.
- tonydiv 9y agoI live down the street from Leland. First time I've seen it mentioned on HN, cool.
- bitexploder 9y agoReminds me of commander Chris Hadfields philosophy of always aiming to be a Zero. He said in any environment you could be a -1 a 0 or a +1. You don't get to decide which of those your efforts end up being. He further observes coming into a new environment and doing too much or trying to overachieve can often just make a mess, making you a -1. Aim to be a zero. Stack those shelves, do the boring work you know you can do well until you are sure you can handle the more complex chores. Also sort of reminds me of Net Promoter Score; would you recommend X to friends and family? Just do the thing that is the point of the place and do the shit out of it, why wouldn't you? -- Louis CK There is wisdom in hard, but simple work that others value, even in tech. Don't be too clever in that MVP. Substance over style. Etc etc.
- kirykl 9y agoEvery place I've worked those people get taken advantage of and are left to do the grunt work, boxed in to their jobs
- bitexploder 9y agoThere was a lot more to it, of course. I took that from his book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth". Maybe this particular bit of philosophy wasn't the reason he became a commander on the ISS, but it seemed to work for him. It isn't to say you let people take advantage of you, or that you don't make hard decisions, or that you never attempt to innovate. It is just to say, don't be a minus one. It is sort of like comedy in that you can't decide to be funny and then everyone will think you are funny. The context is also important, he mostly used this to illustrate how he approached things as a new member of a team learning the ropes, even as the commander. He is thrust into a new environment, and he is the commander of the operation, but he didn't immediately impose his authority, he stacked and organized and learned how things were going before making executive decisions. So the whole -1, 0, +1 thing is as much a leadership style as it is his idea on how to be successful. I think also the environment of a fighter pilot then astronaut does not tolerate showmanship or overt "I am smart" cleverness. It likes consistent hard work and problem solving that is well thought out. Showmanship gets people killed in space. Endeavoring to be a +1 for any of the very numerous wrong reasons just ends up taking away from the mission. Anyhow, perhaps that adds some context to the idea.
- hobs 9y agoJust a note that NPS uses a scale with low predictive validity and you should probably tell people to stop using it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#Criticism_of_NPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#Criticism_of_NPS
- bitexploder 9y agoInteresting. I do like the question from a general 'do you like thing X' perspective, but as critics seem to rightly argue, you should not use it alone. Another question I like in the same vein, "Would you recommend other people to work here?". I think it is just one of many measures of "engagement" though. Also, I have to agree with the general sentiment against NPS. I have seen teams forced into UI enhancement death marches because their app got a low NPS. It was plastered on billboards and there was a huge push to get the NPS up. It became a bit of a running joke. That anecdotal experience made me really wary of it in general, even though I like the concept as a general engagement measure.... maybe you shouldn't base management decisions on just that :)
- ihaveahadron 9y agoAside from growing up in silicon valley, he's the only other inspiration that rich is attainable and accessible. you mean growing up in the worlds best tech city isn't the reason he was able to be successful? i get your point but i think your point is about .5% as correct as you think it is. at the extreme end you could take the same person and have him grow up in a slum somewhere virtually no chance. he could have grown up even in like richmond cali just an hr. away from silicon valley and his chances of success would be like ten thousand (10,000) percent less. you have a point but it's such an insignificant point almost to the point of being completely fucking wrong and a show of extreme ignorance/dumbassness stupidass
- technofiend 9y agoIf you ever read The Millionaire Next Door you'll read a lot of very similar stories about small business entrepeneurs who had a combination of drive and opportunity to succeed, but most of all (at least emphasized by the book) sound financial principles that kept them from losing it all once they made it. I've only spent time with one person like that - a distant uncle I acquired by marrying into my wife's family and he was exactly as described in the book. He had more money than he ever needed, but he still worked and tended to his business, he never moved out of his starter home, never bought flashy cars or did anything to display his wealth. He wasn't miserly but he just didn't see the need to waste money.
- seanp2k2 9y agoIMO, do you (not you you but theoretical "you") want a lot of money because you want to use it for something, or just to have a lot of money? The way I see it, there is no promise of tomorrow. This doesn't mean don't plan for tomorrow, but e.g. an ex of mine had grandparents who would live super frugally (up to and including using McDonalds napkins at their house and "stocking up" every time they went to get their free senior coffee...they also had exclusively sauce packets). They were super proud of how they were [single] millionaires, having saved almost every penny throughout both of their normal office job careers. They lived like they were poor for their whole lives to attain a number in their bank account. They had no plan for anything to actually do with their money, they just really wanted to be millionaires. I see absolutely zero point in this. Obviously, it's their money and theirs to do with what they want, but if all you can think to do with a large sum of money is keep it in the bank or in stocks / bonds with no actual purpose in mind (starting a business or non-profit, early retirement, world travel, owning a home, owning a helicopter, donating it, a few years of hospice care for someone in your family, whatever) it just strikes me as super boring and a waste. I don't actually see how people can work so hard to simply attain a certain number on their bank statement when that is the sole goal. To me, that is a total misunderstanding of what money is, and I feel somewhat bad for people who do this.
- jjeaff 9y agoMy guess is that people like that value financial security above all else. And financial security is a sweet sweet thing to have.
- SpikeDad 9y agoFunny how quality product is never in the metrics. Fortunately the pizza eating population has not real idea what a quality pizza tastes like so another win for billionaires.
- kensai 9y agoPunchline: combine science with sales! ;)
- Safety1stClyde 9y agoSales and engineering are the two pillars of the Conjoined Triangles of Success.
- Angostura 9y agoI presume there must be at least 6 pillars?
- gjm11 9y agoJust the four. http://conjoinedtriangles.com/ http://conjoinedtriangles.com/ [EDITED to add: For the avoidance of doubt, yes it's a spoof.]
- vinceguidry 9y agoThere are only two pillars. He didn't give a name for the lateral connectors.
- gjm11 9y agoI quote, from that very web page: "The four pillars of CToS (pronounced see-to-ess) are Growth, Sales, Engineering and Manufacturing."
- vinceguidry 9y agoThe whole thing is from the Silicon Valley TV show. I'm fairly sure that the two pillars are Sales and Engineering, but you're making me actually go watch Season Three all over again to find out if Barker referred to Growth and Manufacturing as pillars too. YouTube clips on that particular part of the series are sparse. Edit: Yep, Barker refers to Engineering and Sales as the two pillars of success in S03E02, and Growth as the "foundation" of the CToS. Compromise is the "shared hypotenuse". Jack was fired before they could discuss Manufacturing.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoWhy do you idolize him? If anything, he's worthy of scorn... He sounds like the materialist's materialist. Edit: why am I being downvoted for this comment?
- charrondev 9y agoYou’re being downvoted for scorning someone who works hard for no reason other than that they have profitted from it.
- khedoros1 9y agoHard work is admirable, especially when it's also effective, doesn't seek attention, and is patient, intelligent, and diligent.
- ensiferum 9y agoHard work has no intrinsic value. Show me teh monneeeh!
- ageofwant 9y agoVery true. I would like to see more of that from owners and investors.
- mb_72 9y agoMe too, but doesn't it seem as though 'the game' requires a modern CEO to be super-visible, to have their face everywhere, and to be 'seen to be taking action' as well as maybe actually taking action?
- Fricken 9y agoHard work is destroying the planet. Just stop doing things, please. The ideology you've been indoctrinated into is wrong, we're no longer in a place where working hard is beneficial, it's ruining everything.
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- burntrelish1273 9y agoJust an FYI: cheese is the most expensive ingredient in/on a pizza, so this makes perfect sense. Reason: think of all the gallons of milk and processing it takes to make an unit of cheese. Source: Someone whom worked at a Pizza Hut in South San Jose in high-school. PS: Another interesting business model (in Texas) is Braum's, which is a large co-op ice cream/restaurant/convenience store chain run on behalf of a consortium of dairy farmers. This cuts out middlemen and is basically direct-to-consumer. The prices are much lower than similar SKUs in local grocery stores and the quality is quite high.
- kurttheviking 9y agoWhich is a similar model to UDF (United Dairy Farmers) in Ohio[1]. Sidebar: if you find yourself in southern Ohio near a UDF, go ahead and give the cookie dough ice cream a try. You won't be disappointed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Dairy_Farmers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Dairy_Farmers
- burntrelish1273 9y agoNice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braum's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braum's 128 stores in Oklahoma 99 in Texas 27 in Kansas 13 in Arkansas 13 in Missouri
- burntrelish1273 9y agoHave also heard good things about Penn State's creamery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_State_University_Creamery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_State_University_Creamery More dairy companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dairy_product_companies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dairy_product_companie...
- conradev 9y agoWawa also started as a dairy farm
- caseysoftware 9y agoAlso, from the article: > Price has long been Leprino's biggest advantage, and a large one since cheese accounts for about 40% of a pizza's cost.
- tomcam 9y agoI admire the business idea... but, rapacious capitalist though I may be, it fails my personal "would this business embarrass your children" test because what unifies all of these products is that the quality of the cheese is terrible IMHO.
- packetized 9y agoWhat makes it terrible, precisely?
- tomcam 9y agoFlavor--tastes like rubber to me. Texture is rubbery as well.
- joncampbelldev 9y agoI've found that with Papa John's pizza you can significantly improve the texture and flavour by letting it cool then heating it in a frying pan with a lid.
- ericcumbee 9y agoCold pizza reheated in a Cast Iron Skillet with just a dash of olive oil is the best thing in the world.
- dingaling 9y agoPan-frying was the original Neopolitan way to make pizza. Learned that from an Italian work-colleague whose family back home still made them that way.
- mikekchar 9y agoThat's really interesting because I just discovered this the other day. I don't have an oven (living in Japan). I've got a frying pan and a fish grill. Heat up a frying pan with a lid on. Put in the pizza. Wait a couple of minutes (doesn't take long). Finish it under the grill. It's surprisingly good!
- deepnotderp 9y agoIt's sad that the engineer that made everything happen, Lester Kielsmeier, only got a tiny fraction of the overall wealth. Maybe this can change someday? I'm not hopeful though...
- burntrelish1273 9y agoIt's important for scientists, engineers and inventors to also understand how business works to not get short-changed and how to negotiate an equal equity stake. Ignorance is no excuse. Anyone whom offers to go into business with someone (at a less than equal footing) or tries to make them their employee when they're the primary technologist is likely cheating them a-priori.
- IslaDeEncanta 9y agoIgnorance is no excuse for the natural consequence of capitalism? Capitalism is founded on exploitation, don't blame it on the engineers.
- jpttsn 9y agoExactly! You can't just go around treating engineers like adults.
- jo78 9y agoOh boy...so what do you tell your kids an adult is? Someone who does whatever it takes, no matter if they need to, no matter who it hurts right? It's a highly misguided view that breaks down as soon as you hit life's roadblocks and require someone else to help you out.
- jpttsn 9y agoDon't worry, I don't tell my kids that. You made it up.
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- deepnotderp 9y agoWait, what's the "technology" that's being talked about in this cheese? Isn't it just normal cheese? Am I missing something here or is this artificial faux cheese?
- dpark 9y agoCheese production doesn't lack technology just because it's a familiar product. There are hundreds if not thousands of types of cheese. What distinguishes them is partly the dairy origin, but also largely the techniques used to produce them. Just looking at mozzarella, there are hundreds of different mozzarella cheeses on the market. They are not identical. Being able to consistently produce a mozzarella that has certain attributes requires tight control of a process that starts with an inconsistent output. What temperature do you process at? When does it change? When do you add rennet? How do you separate whey from the curds? How long do you age? etc. All of this is tech.
- spc476 9y agoI found this YouTube channel---https://www.youtube.com/user/greeningofgavin/videos---that https://www.youtube.com/user/greeningofgavin/videos---that goes rather deep into the cheese making process. The host makes cheese---all types of cheese, at home. It's pretty interesting to see the similarities and differences between cheeses.
- jaclaz 9y agoTo be picky, it's (good or bad tasting, de giustibus non dispoutandum est ) not "mozzarella" but just "cheese for pizza".
- metaphor 9y agoThe distinction is irrelevant to the point made by the parent. That it's simply just "cheese for pizza" does not negate the fact that significant process tech is leveraged when manufacturing a product of strict quality and consistency at scale.
- transitorykris 9y agoI love this story. Yes, building unsexy things can be lucrative. It's also amazing that him and his partner has spent their lives producing a product that within a margin of error has fed everyone in America at some point. But, it gave me time to stop and reflect, I've personally (and unknowingly until now) worked with about 25k lbs of his cheese during my tenure at Pizza Hut.
- blazespin 9y agoHe was private because his buyers wanted it that way. Do they really want everyone knowing they use the same cheese? I wonder what changed for him to come out like this.
- TaylorGood 9y agoMy client supplies the pizza dough.. same thing.
- theDoug 9y agoThey use the same cheese company but the story makes it clear that they do not use the same cheese. Each company has its own product tailored to their needs.
- criddell 9y agoI worked in a potato chip factory for a little while and they made lots of store brand products. That doesn't mean they were all the same though. It was more like contract manufacturing. They produced a product to the specifications of the customer. It wasn't just repackaging the same product in different bags.
- bagacrap 9y agoI've never heard someone praise Pizza Hut or Domino's on the basis of their cheese, much less the uniqueness of their cheese.
- homero 9y agoI swear it was government cheese caves
- faragon 9y agoBuffalo milk cheese is amazing for pizzas (after you have the pizza cooked, put a bit of buffalo milk cheese on top).
- puranjay 9y agoAside: screw Forbes. Between the pre-load ad screen and the autolay ad video (which for some reason I couldn't even close), their site is downright unusable.
- abpavel 9y agoPausing and then quickly unpausing AdBlock when the page starts to load is a workaround.
- DamonHD 9y agoI just gave up visiting Forbes long since. I use ads myself (eg AdSense and AdWords) and have no objection to well-behaved ad copy, but I run NoScript for safety and F's site is thus pretty well unusable to me.
- jdeibele 9y agoI'm using uBlock on Safari and I'm not seeing this. Still hopeful that we'll see something that universally disables HTML5 auto-play videos.
- threepipeproblm 9y agoThese are precisely the 3 pizza joints I cannot convince my room mate to order from. I guess he doesn't like the secret billionaire cheese. EDIT: Not sure why this is being downvoted. Analysis of the mass market pizza industry as a race to the bottom, in terms of ingredient quality, is an old idea. Couldn't the secrecy, fake differentiation of leading megacorps, and low quality cheese be connected? Are we supposed to be impressed at this way of making money?
- hobarrera 9y agoI find it disgusting to think that such a horrible industry that pillars on exploiting sentient animals up to the point of their death from exhaustion handles so Billions. It's even sadder how people seem not to care at all, and are okay with all the torture and mutilation that goes behind the milk/cheese industry if they've something tasty in front of them.
- JabavuAdams 9y agoThey're cows. An animal that we've created to be docile, stupid, and, and food. Don't care.
- slfnflctd 9y agoYou're gonna have a hard enough time getting people to not bitterly attack you for even merely suggesting it might be better for everyone if they ate a little less meat. Going after dairy is an absolute non-starter (unless maybe you're talking only to vegetarians). I highly recommend sticking with targets that might actually be achievable in your lifetime without requiring the complete collapse of global civilization.
- hobarrera 9y agoThe dairy industry is one of the most brutal and soulless ones there is. I don't know what you'd call a "starter" if that isn't. I also fail to see why this would "collapse global civilization". The fact that there's a huge industry behind this in some countries doesn't make it critical. The world economy wouldn't change that much IF these vanished (people would just consume something else).
- slfnflctd 9y ago> people would just consume something else Yeah... this is the problem right here. The biggest issues facing our species and our planet boil down to one simple thing: the majority of the human race is too selfish, shortsighted, stupid and stubborn to change even the smallest aspects of their destructive behavior. I mostly agree with you, the reason I said eliminating dairy is a 'non-starter' is entirely about how difficult it is to get fellow humans to upgrade their life choices. That was my whole point. This is also why I half-jokingly mentioned a civilization collapse as the sole way to 'fix' this, because it is only after the nukes have gone off and things have gone all to hell worldwide (and dairy is no longer available) that you will get people to stop eating cheese and ice cream. Outside of complete dictatorial control over a population closed off from the rest of the planet, they will keep consuming dairy until they cannot. It's sad and pathetic, but that's nature of the human beast.
- NelsonMinar 9y agoSee also from 2014 "New Mexico dairy shuts down after undercover activist videotape". A dairy that supplied Leprino was caught on video treating cows horribly. Leprino seems to have responded reasonably. > On Thursday, Denver-based Leprino Foods, for whom Winchester Dairy was a supplier, announced a program that requires its dairy suppliers and farmers to comply with new company guidelines regarding animal care. Leprino, the world’s largest producer of mozzarella cheese and a supplier to fast-food chains nationwide, has said that it was “extremely repulsed” by the video. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dairy-farm-video-20141219-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dairy-farm-video-2014121...
- cies 9y ago> Leprino seems to have responded reasonably. In line with his "ethics" principle that comes after quality and price. Anyway, if you value the wellbeing of animals going vegan is pretty much the only to me. There's no such thing as animal-friendly meat or bio-industrial dairy.
- whiddershins 9y agoBut then there would be no cows.
- csallen 9y agoDefine "no cows". There are plenty of animals we don't eat that continue to exist.
- samcal 9y agoRight, but those animals aren't as naturally helpless as a domesticated cow.
- orange_fritter 9y agoI think it was just a joke to rile up the vegans.
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- danjoc 9y agomom_i_posted_it_again.jpg https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Billionaire%20Cheese%20Pizza https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Billionaire%20Cheese%20Pizza
- salemh 9y agoAnyone parse this sentence for me? *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 dad thought Lester Kielsmeier died in WWII, or?
- bzbarsky 9y agoLester's dad thought Lester had been killed. He was presumably the executor for Lester's estate, which was liquidated (e.g. the cheese factory was sold).