AUBURN – Every week, George Stamboules watches cheese prices go up.

Eight cents a pound here. Ten cents. Twelve.

He tops his George’s Pizza specialties with nearly 600 pounds of mozzarella and other cheese every week. It now costs him $600 to $700 more than it did this spring.

“And it still goes up,” he said.

Stamboules has so far suffered the increase in silence. But he may not last much longer.

“If it keeps going like it has, we’ll have to do something. Go up on prices, definitely,” he said.

And he isn’t alone.

Rising milk prices – now $3.39 or more per gallon wholesale in Maine – have forced up the cost all dairy-based products, including cheese. Hit hard: local pizza joints, which rely on cheese to top their pizza and sandwiches. In many cases, they’re spending hundreds, and sometimes thousands, more than they’re used to.

“This was almost like overnight,” said Amos Gray, owner of Mario’s of New Gloucester.

Gray goes through 640 pounds of provolone a month. His costs have jumped 50 cents a pound in the past few weeks.

That’s $320 a month more for just one kind of cheese.

“We’ve had to increase our prices to the customers just to make ends meet,” said Gray, who’s gone up 10 to 15 cents on his pizzas.

John Beatrice, owner of Za Pizza Market in Auburn, has seen his prices jump, too.

Since October, his cheese has gone up 74 cents a pound. He goes through 60 pounds of pizza cheese a week, plus more than 100 pounds of American, Swiss and others used for sandwiches.

Because of the higher prices, he’s spending about 50 cents more to make a large pizza. But unlike others, he plans to absorb that extra cost for a while.

“To us that isn’t a big thing. It’ll go back down eventually,” he said. “To us it’s a little storm we’ve got to ride out.”

Sabattus House of Pizza doesn’t plan to go up on its prices either, even though cheese prices are the highest the pizza joint’s seen in 15 years. Because they don’t want their customers to get exasperated by fluctuating prices, the owners reassess their prices once a year or less. And this isn’t that time.

“We just bite the bullet and keep going,” said owner Vicki Farrar.

In Lewiston, Davinci’s Eatery is perhaps the luckiest place of all. Davinci’s locked in a cheese price, kitchen manager Paul Girourd said. Its costs have barely budged.

That’s great news for the restaurant known for its brick oven pizzas and pizza buffet.

At least it’s great news as long as the cheese contract lasts.

“It hasn’t affected me,” he said. “Yet.”