That’s some big cheese.
A Staten Island man claims his dad was the true mozzarella master behind the famed Polly-O cheese brand and has demanded $1.5 billion in damages from three companies he claims “stole” the “good will” of the business, including mega food corporation Kraft Heinz.
“Kraft bought the factories. They never paid my father for the goodwill — the reputation, the authenticity, the Brooklyn origin — that he bought in 1967,” Joseph Failla said in a Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit.
“They attached it to their bird-branded cheese, sold it as real Brooklyn, 1899 heritage. All lies,” he said in court papers.
The company which eventually became the famed Polly-O brand of mozzarella and string cheeses, with its well-known logo featuring a yellow bird in a chef’s hat, began in 1899 in Coney Island, when Giuseppe Pollio launched his Columbia Street store.
Failla’s dad, Vincent, a native of Red Hook, worked for Pollio beginning when he was just 15, his son said.
“He became the face of the company — they even called him Vinny Pollio,” his son recalled.
Vincent Failla served for the US Army in Korea and when he returned, bought G. Pollio & Sons’ store for $5,000, court records showed.
The contract for the 1967 business deal, included in the lawsuit, shows Vincent Failla bought “all stock, inventory good will and fixtures,” along with the trade name G. Pollio & Sons.
He worked the store until the late 1970s, when his son said neighborhood decline coupled with a city sewer project forced its closure. Vincent Failla died in 2004, at age 75, his son said.
While Joseph Failla, 64, acknowledged the Pollio family sold their factories to Kraft separately in 1986 for an undisclosed sum — he said the situation stinks worse than sour milk.
“They sold the factories, the mechanics of the company — and my father bought the heart of the company,” said Joseph Failla, who is acting as his own lawyer in the lawsuit.
Kraft later sold the Polly-O brand to Belgioioso Cheese in 2021, also for an undisclosed sum, when the product had $177 million in annual sales.
“My father got nothing,” Joseph Failla lamented.
“The marble storefront they show? That’s 238 Columbia Street store is what my father bought in 1967. They never owned it. They just stole it, called it history, made billions from it and never paid us a dime.”
Kraft Heinz, Belgioioso and French dairy manufacturer Lactalis — which briefly owned the brand — did not immediately return messages seeking comment.