It’s 9 a.m., and through the vinyl slats of the Mozzarella Company, Elm Street’s long-standing cheese company, you can see cheesemakers piling bright green chilies for discs of queso blanco. Mauricio Travesi, the soft-spoken general manager, slices a piece from a wedge of Chihuahua cheese with dashes of pimento and passes it to me.

You likely know the Mozzarella Company’s origin story already: It’s a tale of simplicity, focus and great cheese. When owner Paula Lambert was young, she went to Perugia, Italy to study the Italian language. As Lambert stated in her interview with Millionaire Blueprints Magazine, she had a “light bulb moment” when she tried a simple mozzarella salad. Dallas didn’t have the fresh stuff.