J. L. Kraft[1] was born on December 11, 1874, near Stevensville, Ontario, Canada, located just north of Fort Erie, to Mennonite[2] parents Minerva Alice née Tripp (1848–1933) and George Franklin Krafft (1842–1914), a farmer[3] of German descent.

Stranded in the big city, Kraft used his remaining $65 in capital (equivalent to $1,850 in 2023) to rent a horse and wagon and established his own business of buying cheese wholesale and selling it to local grocers.

[4] Kraft saw a large increase in business during World War I when the United States government provided cheese in tins to their armed forces.

Over the years, Kraft introduced many innovative products and used progressive marketing techniques to make his company one of North America's leading food producers.

[10] Kraft was an amateur jewelry maker and would find unpolished jade on the road, which he would shape, polish, and set into rings.

[12] He was "deeply involved" in the North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago[11] and was also a "strong proponent of religious education for young people".

[13] In the mid-1920s, Kraft began a venture to create a fashionable golf and tennis resort community in Lake Wales, Florida, along with Carl and Bertha Hinshaw.

The Chalet Suzanne opened in 1931, the worst year of the Great Depression,[citation needed] and has been run by successive generations of the Hinshaw family ever since.

[14][15] Back then, there was a train route running from the north woods to Chicago which facilitated both industrial shipping and personal transport for the area.