Dallas Wuethrich

Dallas Wuethrich, 71, has a $2.2 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He joined the company in 1967 after attending the University of Wisconsin-River Falls for three years, according to a 1974 profile of Grassland in the Tribune Record Gleaner newspaper, when the firm was making 50,000 to 60,000 pounds of butter daily, about 1/30th of its production today. Wuethrich eventually merged the family’s distribution and manufacturing businesses, and gobbled up other butter makers along the way. In 2005, Grassland purchased West Point Dairy Products LLC, which controlled about 10 percent of U.S. production at the time. Last year, he added specialty butter maker Alcam and its 1.5 percent market share. About one-third of Grassland butter is sold under its brands, while the rest is about evenly split between private label and bulk shipments to large bakeries.