BROOKLYN, N.Y. - When Sal Salzarulo first came to the United States, he worked for his brother, dreamed of returning to Italy, and thought wistfully of his family's cheese business.

Salzarulo says he finally said to himself "what am I doing? I'm not building anything for myself." At that point, he was importing and selling macaroni to local grocery stores. He says he would go in to sell pasta but he would also look at the cheeses. What he saw didn't impress him.

So Sal Salzarulo begin making his own cheese in his family's tradition. In 1979, the first Lioni Latticini Mozzarella was made in a garage in Brooklyn and was hand-delivered to three customers. In about four months, says, Salzarulo, he he had about forty regular customers. A year later, Salzarulo's nephew, Sal Salzarulo, or Little Sal, joined his uncle's business as a partner, running the production.

Although the company has gone through a number of changes - the addition of a Brooklyn-based plant; the addition of a curd plant in upstate New York in 1982; an accountant to handle the books; a new partner and export business; and new products - Salzarulo says quality and service have never changed.

"I put my foot down," he explains. "If we get milk and it's not 100%, I won't make cheese with it. I always try to make it (the product) 110% better."

Salzarulo admits his business's success story sounds like the quintessential American dream; but the reality is a little less prosaic. Normally, Salzarulo is in the plant 10-15 hours per day - making cheese and consulting on a variety of plant operations and day-to-day business issues.

"I give as much as possible - any problem or question from every customer -I answer," he explains. "Because for me, every customer is the same - whether he buys 10 cases or 100 cases - he has the same dream as I had."

It's this commitment to superior quality and service that makes the business successful, says Jeffrey Silver, Salzarulo's business partner in Lioni Bufala, a specialty division of Lioni Latticini. Company employees watch every piece of cheese leaving the plant for quality.

"We're not just in the cheese business," states Silver. "Our company is based on service. Anyone can manufacture Mozzarella, but very few can be consistent with their quality and give services as we do"

For example, all of the Lioni product is manufactured and shipped daily on a pre-order and pre-sell basis. The product has a shorter shelf life because it's 100% natural; and certain products, including the smoked products are hand-wrapped "the old-fashioned way." In addition, the company's Bufala Mozzarella is shipped from Italy within 24 hours of production.

Salzarulo stresses customer service as the only way to get ahead in business. Respect, attention to detail, hard work and integrity are words he uses to describe Lioni Latticini's approach to customers.

"It's easy to get a customer - keeping them is the hard part," he says. "We try to cultivate our customers and sell deeply to them. If you lose a customer you've had for three to four years, you'll need to have four to five new customers just to replace that one."

Another key to Lioni's success is the fact that the company has focused on its objectives. Silver says Lioni Latticini makes and imports Mozzarella - it won't expand into other food items, just into new packaging and extensions on the Mozzarella product.

For example, the company has expanded its Mozzarella product line from fresh to Mozzarella in water, smoked products, dry Mozzarella, fresh ricotta and the imported Mozzarella di Bufala or water buffalo Mozzarella.

Also, Lioni offers its cheese in a variety of sizes including ciliegini (cherry size), bocconcini (bite size), ovolini (egg size), loaves, braided and twisted products and hanging products.

Lioni Latticini is the largest importer of buffalo Mozzarella in the country, says Silver. The Mozzarella di Bufala is a specialty product that he describes as "an acquired taste." It has penetrated specialty markets throughout the U.S. through the technical information, in-store demonstrations, food shows and conventions and seminars.

"Whatever it takes to get as much information to the decision makers and sales staff as possible - we want everyone to have the same amount of information to sell the products, " says Silver.

In 1991, Silver helped usher in a whole new market for Lioni Latticini by taking the products national. Now the company ships to 18 states weekly. In about three years, the company grew from 500 customers to 800 and had a 40 to 50 percent increase in sales.

Even with that expansion, which Silver calls turning a "small neighborhood manufacturer into a national supplier," Lioni hasn't sacrificed quality; in fact, he thinks the company has actually improved its understanding of what the customers want and need.

"We have never lost a customer because of the quality of our cheese," states Silver. "It's always been because someone was undercutting our product on price."

The company diversified when it went national, adding small, medium and large foodservice distributors, cruise lines and airline catering to its existing customer base.

Silver says his company's biggest difficulty was logistics. Delivering the freshest product to the customers in the right amount of time has been a challenge, but the company has established "excellent relationships" with a national trucking company.

In the future, Silver says Lioni Latticini sees itself expanding in the retail market - doing the same thing in retail that it has done in food service -offering quality and service.

Expanding into major national supermarket chains will be accomplished by modifying package design, the longevity of the cheese for retail customers and educating supermarkets and distributors. (See related story.)

"We do things the old-fashioned way," says Silver. "We work directly with people - everything is hands-on here. The big thing for us has been service, service, service."

For more information, contact Lioni Latticni at 7819 15th Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. (718) 232-7852 (plant); 800-528-3252 (sales). Send faxes to (718) 259-8378.

-Heather Lee Schroeder
Cheese Market News
December 8, 1995