Rick Rosenfield: Co-Founder of California Pizza Kitchen and Author of The California Pizza Kitchen Story

Episode 866

On today’s episode, we welcome Rick Rosenfield, Co-Founder of California Pizza Kitchen and author of The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza. Before helping create one of the most recognizable restaurant brands in the world, Rick built a successful career as a federal prosecutor, handling major criminal cases and organized crime matters. But in 1985, he and his longtime friend and fellow attorney, Larry Flax, made an unexpected decision: leave the legal profession behind and open a pizza restaurant in Beverly Hills.
What followed was one of the most remarkable brand-building stories in modern restaurant history. California Pizza Kitchen didn’t just create a successful restaurant—it helped redefine what pizza could be, pioneered California-style pizza, and reshaped the casual dining experience. From barbecue chicken pizza to open kitchens and elevated dining, CPK became a category-defining brand that grew from a single location into a global phenomenon.
In this episode, Rick shares the lessons behind that journey, including the risks they took, the challenges of rapid growth, and the importance of building both a brand and a business. We discuss the culture-first philosophy that became the foundation of CPK, the ROCK values—Respect, Opportunity, Communication, and Kindness—and why culture ultimately matters more than product. Rick also reflects on entrepreneurship, leadership under pressure, partnerships, private equity, loss of control, and what happens when the company you built evolves beyond your hands.
This conversation is packed with insights for entrepreneurs, operators, restaurant leaders, and anyone interested in building an enduring brand. Rick’s story is a reminder that some of the biggest opportunities come from taking an unconventional path—and having the courage to follow it.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So, your only choice should be go focus on what you can control, control, control. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. So join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go, let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Have you ever had an idea that sounded completely crazy at the time, but you just couldn’t let it go? In the mid 1980s pizza was pretty simple: pepperoni, sausage, maybe mushrooms. If you were adventurous, nobody was asking for barbecued chicken on a pizza, and then two federal prosecutors certainly weren’t expected to walk away from successful legal careers to open a restaurant, but they did. So, California Pizza Kitchen, and today I’m excited to be joined by Rick Rosenfield, the co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen, who has a brand new incredible book out called The California Pizza Kitchen Story, and before helping to create one of the most recognizable restaurant brands in America, as I mentioned, he had a totally different career, and then decided with his co-founder and friend Larry Flax to go off and create the pizza that changed an industry. So I’m excited to not only dig into this incredible book from the author himself, but also the brand and how it started, how it scaled, so incredible. So, Rick, welcome to the Kara Goldin show. I’m so excited to meet you.

Rick Rosenfield 2:11
Thanks, Kara. It’s fun to be here,

Kara Goldin 2:12
super, super fun. So, for listeners who might know the name California Pizza Kitchen, but might not know the backstory behind it, or, or kind of the vision for what you wanted to create, maybe start there.

Rick Rosenfield 2:29
Sure. Well, my partner and I were started as federal prosecutors, that’s where we met in Los Angeles. I grew up in Chicago and went to work for the Department of Justice in Washington, writing briefs in the Supreme Court, and then became assistant US attorney, trial lawyer in LA, and then we went off and formed our defense practice, which we did for 12 or 13 years, but we were frustrated with it, and we always wanted to be in the restaurant business. In fact, we had one idea after another in the entire time we were practicing, and we got close to an idea that each time a new client would come along with a big retainer, and that would put it on hold, and then finally in late 1984 I had just seen this pasta cafeteria in Chicago, and I had this in my mind at that time I was running marathons, and carbohydrate voting for marathons was the thing, and fresh pasta in was the thing also, and I told Larry about it, so yeah, it’s a good idea, let’s look at it, we get after we finish this long trial in San Francisco, so we came back from the trial. We were told about a concept like that, and we went out and saw it in the mall in Glendale, California. This pasta concept with a pizza going under heat lamps, it looked awful, but people were grabbing a slice of pizza, so on the way home back to our offices in Beverly Hills, we started kicking around, saying let’s put some pizza in the pasta concept, and somehow by the time we got back to our law office we had changed completely. Now the concept became look at this new style of pizza that’s emerging. It started with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She is really the mother of California cuisine, but also the mother of California style pizza, and she was putting seasonal vegetables on it, and and goat cheese. And then Wolfgang Puck took that idea to Spago, and he were introduced it with duck sausage pizza and smoked salmon pizza, called the Jewish Pizza. What a great idea, but let’s, let’s do Spago for the masses. Let’s make it accessible. You don’t have to be a celebrity to get. In or wait two weeks and make it family oriented, and it all happened in one afternoon before we, however, but before we had a menu or even the name, just the concept had emerged very clearly to us. Take this wood burning oven, put it in the center of the room, put a counter around it,

Kara Goldin 5:21
so barbecued chicken pizza was clearly one of the first pizzas that I had from California Pizza Kitchen. It was incredible. I think the first place I had it actually was in Los Angeles. Can you talk about that first restaurant that you actually opened?

Rick Rosenfield 5:40
Sure, so we ended up the story is in the book, as you saw, making a deal with Spago’s former chef, pizza chef, and went back and forth, finally came to terms with him, we opened the first restaurant, and on that, and he had his Spago-ish pizzas, it was rabbit sausage pizza and lamb sausage pizza, radicchio pine nut pizza, grape weave pizza, and all these exotic pizzas, but among that group was barbecued chicken pizza, and it was a smash success if we sold 200 pizzas, 160 of them were barbecue chicken, 20 of them were mushroom peppery eronium sausage, which my partner and I insisted on, just as Baskin-Robbins had 31 flavors, and Chimocom and Fudge was our number one, vanilla chocolates and strawberry were two, three, and four. So, so we insisted on a traditional cheese pizza and a mushroom pepperoni and sausage pizza, but that’s all we got on the menu. All who has a pizza is bombed, except barbecue chicken pizza, and that was the light bulb, because what people came in and said, which was really amazing. It was a light bulb moment for us. I don’t even like pizza. I love this.

Kara Goldin 7:08
That’s wild. And this is at a time where I can only imagine, but you talk about it in the book as well, where people thought these guys are crazy. They’re federal prosecutors who are, you know, what in the world were they doing, and what I mean, I’m sure your family and friends were saying that to you as well, that you know what exactly, what is it that you’re trying to do here, Rick?

Rick Rosenfield 7:37
Everyone thought we were crazy, my wife, who grew up in her family’s diner in Birmingham, Alabama, and thought she had married this successful lawyer, she was crazy too, only for a moment, though, because with Esther, whenever I did, she was all in, so she, she was all in from the beginning, but we did get 22 friends to invest with us after we had mortgaged our home, borrowed money on our law practice from the bank, basically mortgaged ourselves to the hilt, signed personal guarantees on the lease. Well, we were all in, and, but you know, it’s interesting. I reflected on it. I often say, if I knew then what I know now, would I have

Kara Goldin 8:26
done it?

Rick Rosenfield 8:27
And I’m not so sure, right? I think naivete is what got us over the hurdle that we thought, wow, we have this great idea, a concept, right, for these new style pizzas, it’s a concept, but as soon as we got into the restaurant business, we realized we could never make it out a concept. We would have been one and done if we didn’t have people that could execute our vision,

Kara Goldin 9:01
so interesting, so when you had this idea, and you were sitting around with Larry, and dreaming this idea up, was it, did you have the idea that it was going to go across the country in retail, or, sorry, in grocery stores, I mean, what was kind of the vision that you had as the co-founder

Rick Rosenfield 9:26
at that moment. Grocery stores was the farthest thing from our mind. However, in our naivete, nevertheless, when I sat down to at that point before computers, it was a word processor at my desk, and for the bank asked us to write a business plan. I wrote this, would be realized, this is before we had a menu, before we had a chef, before we had barbecue chicken pizza, and I wrote. It that we were going to introduce the third style of the third major style of pizza to the country, along with New York and Chicago. We were going to create the third style that was important, California style pizza, and California, and this is where it gets crazily bold, right? Chutzpah, pure chutzpah, and pure hubris, right? I wrote that in the future, California-style pizza will be defined by whatever California Pizza Kitchen says it

Kara Goldin 10:38
is, and.. and do you think that that’s the same, I would you say that today.

Rick Rosenfield 10:43
Well, of course it happened, but yeah, but, but, but, as I reflect, it was pure hubris to say it, but oh, I’m sorry to continue. We wrote that we intended to take it national and indeed international before we ever really had the fully defined concept,

Kara Goldin 11:02
and so how big did it actually did California Pizza Kitchen actually get? If you can share that with the audience.

Rick Rosenfield 11:10
Sure, I can. When we sold it to private equity in 2011 we had 265 restaurants worldwide, and many people that go into a CPK restaurant think it’s franchise, but they were not. The we owned over 200 full-service restaurants were company-owned in the US. The only two franchisees we had, other than the airports, which were HMS host Steve Wynn, who became our biggest investor with our second restaurant, convinced us to make him a franchisee when he opened the Mirage, and then Rick Caruso from LA, who, of course, is very famous and prominent developer now, was opening his first shopping center in the, in the late 80s, I’m sorry, late 90s, not the exact 1996 and he wanted to become a franchisee, and said, I just want to have CPK here, I’ll own it, you guys operate it for me, he, but he wanted CPK, but other than that, they were all company owned, but how big did it get when the math? If you took, we were public, so that those numbers were available. If I recall, we were doing around $650 million in revenue. If you add that to our frozen pizza sales, because then we were in 20,000 locations, all 50 states, District Columbia, and then you add the international franchise revenue, you would come out really close to a billion dollars.

Kara Goldin 12:52
Wow,

Rick Rosenfield 12:53
so we were nearly a billion dollar system-wide revenue, if you looked at it within those terms, which was pretty mind-boggling to me.

Kara Goldin 13:03
So, in the climb to scale the company, every entrepreneur, and you as well, have you have moments when you see how hard this business is, and you think, oh boy, this is it, right? I’m not sure that we’re going to make it. What was the first point where you said, “Wow, this is one that I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to find my way out of this

Rick Rosenfield 13:35
one. That’s interesting. We never did get to that point.

Kara Goldin 13:39
Good.

Rick Rosenfield 13:40
What happened. So we always had confidence in what we were trying to create. And around 1992 we had 25 units. We were about to go public, and PepsiCo came, and they bought two thirds of us. To make a long story shorter, they came along and said, we don’t want to buy you guys out, if you want to leave, we’re not interested, but what they did then, at that time, they owned, they were the largest restaurant chain in the world in number of units, they owned Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, this is before they spun it into what became Yum, and they said, and where, where they do what with them is they basically, we had 25 restaurants that we had built over the previous seven years, and they said build 30 a year, and in fact they said you have a blank check, you basically, you guys are cowards if you don’t build 50 to 100 a year. So they said, put them everywhere, you know, try them in every kind of location. So we built up these real estate teams to build a pipeline, because you could imagine the pipeline. Build 30 or more restaurants a year off of our base was amazing, that what we had to ramp up for, but we were very full of ourselves, and we were spurred on, and we started building restaurants in a lot of neighborhoods to areas that were green areas, meaning not high density, you know, with future future locations with malls that were in what they call green areas, you know, surrounded by cows, but going to grow someday, and those tanked, and now we found ourselves with Pepsi stepping into the business, putting in their own executives and cutting our quality, that’s as close as it ever got to me to a really, really bad moment, and I remember I was visiting our restaurants in Florida and having dinner with some of our managers in Miami, and had said to them, you know, we’re still committed to quality, and I saw out of the corner of my eye a woman manager roll her eyes at her compatriot across the table, like, does he really believe this? And I went home, and I called Larry, and I said, “Larry, we are really screwed, and that was probably of everything that may have been the low point, because and then the issue to me was less about our, our customer, we had lost faith, our employees had lost, we had broken trust with them, because I believe what made CPK great in its greatest days was that our employees carried forth the torch of quality, that they were committed to quality, they knew the company was committed to quality, they knew we were committed to training, they were new to the to the greatest ingredients, when we broke trust with them was the most challenging period of of my experience at CPK in the 25 years,

Kara Goldin 17:13
so, so interesting, so so they hadn’t totally bought you out, right? They just controlled the majority of the company.

Rick Rosenfield 17:22
Well, it’s interesting because of my, our great lawyer, Bob Cotton, our personal lawyer, and CPK’s lawyer. We actually had a deal, negotiated a deal with PepsiCo, where it didn’t matter how much equity they had, they would never have more than 50% of the vote, so they had, they had two thirds of the equity and 50% of the vote. We had a deadlock potential. They had no way to really control us, but Larry and I were so humbled and chagrined by us over expanding that we literally let them have the reins, even though they didn’t have the legal reins. We were broken, we were, we were literally emotionally defeated. I’d say that’s probably an answer to your question, that’s as probably as low as we had ever gotten. I didn’t really believe we were on the verge of failing as a business. We had PepsiCo to backstop us at that point, so when they finally got out of the restaurant business, which is part of the book, they spun off their restaurants into yum, but because of that agreement we had that our lawyer was so smart to have worked out they couldn’t spin us without our approval, so all they could do is put their interest up for sale and tell the buyers Pepsi would like to sell its two thirds interest, but we can’t. You’ll have to make us an offer that’s acceptable to us, and then you have to make an offer to Rick and Larry that’s acceptable to them. It gave us some great leverage, as you can imagine. That’s what happened.

Kara Goldin 19:05
Oh, that’s yeah, so, so interesting. And so, how long before you had sort of given up, I guess, did that ultimately.. how long did you have to wait for that to occur?

Rick Rosenfield 19:17
Well, is let’s say, and less, less than two years, so we were down and out. PepsiCo was effectively running the company, and lo and behold, they decide to spit off the restaurants, and up comes that deal, where, go, whoa, wait a minute, we have a whole new life, right, because we were also crushed under the debt that Pepsi was loaning us. They were writing those checks for expansion, but it was a loan that went someday was going to come due. Now all of a sudden we had a brand new life, we could control the deal, and what. Happened was, which uncredibly, as Pepsi got out, sold it to private equity guys, Brookman, Rosser, Cheryl, out of New York, and the debt was completely wiped out. Now we had our interest completely free of debt, other than the financing the BRS put on it, but we were relieved of a lot of money and gave us a whole new life, and whoa, we have done took it from there.

Kara Goldin 20:28
I mean, it’s fascinating, and you know, you talk about this in the book. I mean, many founders just can’t even imagine all that you’ve been through, right here they are, maybe they’re in their local airport, having a California pizza kitchen, maybe even a barbecue chicken, but to know that the founders have been challenged like this, I mean, they have no idea, right? I mean, it’s, it’s, and no idea it could happen to them,

Rick Rosenfield 21:00
right? Yeah, these are that’s why I think that’s the purpose in writing the book is to help people who are interested, well, to two on one side to entrepreneurs that face these challenges and want to have some help in navigating it, and the other was that I wanted to really talk about the culture that we built, for,

Kara Goldin 21:23
yeah,

Rick Rosenfield 21:24
for restaurant tours, for people in business, for people in their own personal lives. The culture that CPK had is quite unique.

Kara Goldin 21:35
Well, and you talk about that, that the culture that you created, I mean, once things started to happen when you weren’t around, that trust started to break with the employees, so I would imagine some of them left on their own, some were laid off, but everybody watches that happen as well, so you, the culture really starts to break down. How did that make you feel as you were starting to, you know, listen to some of these employees who you know had trusted you for so long?

Rick Rosenfield 22:13
If are you referring to the period after we sold, and

Kara Goldin 22:16
correct? Yeah,

Rick Rosenfield 22:17
yeah, so we sold once, once we sold to private equity, you know, and then it’s a matter of history, right, that they put a substantial amount of debt on it. They first thing, and they, they cut the expansion entirely, right, and they had their own view of what the culture should be. They wanted to remake the culture in their own image, not the image that Larry and I had created, and swept out a lot of longtime employees. We were most proud that we had 30-ish regional directors that had grown up with us, literally. So we always promoted from within. It was almost unheard of for somebody to come from outside the company, and then be promoted. We didn’t need to, we didn’t need to look outside the company. So people who were our regional directors at that point had been with us an average of 14 years, and these were people that probably average started with us at the age of 22 right. So these were young people had grown with us, and then the new management came in, and they fired some, weeded out others, others left, and then they brought in younger people from the form, from former company, among others that they brought in, and they gave them many more restaurants to manage, meaning these regional directors. So we had our view that a regional director for us felt could handle seven to nine restaurants. They had a view they could handle more, so you have inexperienced people trying to handle more than we thought that they could handle, that’s what they literally, what they did. But most importantly, was it was heartbreaking to see, I’ll go. So I gave them, they owned it, right? They had a right to make the changes. Okay, that’s that’s on them. So you know, I made a comment often when I was in business, and I said, you know, if you, if you share something with me and ask me to be a partner in your decision, I’m your partner, but if you decide to do it on your own and you take that risk, then we see how it turns out, I’m just the judge, and history sort of demonstrated that these, they were unsuccessful in what they did, so it isn’t my, my criticisms or thoughts are just personal, right? They, they’re subjective, but objectively they, objectively they failed.

Kara Goldin 24:55
Yeah, so, so interesting, and it. Must have been painful to watch it, and especially the brand, the great brand, the happy brand that you had built along the way. So, what would you do differently if you had to, if you could go back in time, knowing what you know today, and maybe there’s some advice that you could share with other founders, knowing what you know today.

Rick Rosenfield 25:27
Well, if it was personal, what happened in our case was we actually thought Larry and I thought that we were going to be around after we sold, we, we had not a legal binding contract with the buyers, but a handshake, right? An agreement that we were going to remain as co-chairman of the company, and after the sale that completely fell apart, so we were left out in the cold. We had no, as I said, then that was not a legal violation to me, it was just personally of a breaking of a trust in a word, etc. So I, when I reflect back, if I had known that we were going to be gone, I don’t think I would have wanted to do the deal, but there was a message that I do talk about in my book. We were public, therefore we had a public board. Once you start down that process, where you quote the magic words, we’re exploring, we’re exploring strategic alternatives. Once a public company puts that out, there is a snowball rolling. because the lawyers get involved, the financial advisors get involved, and there’s a lot of pressure on the board. You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. You’re going to get sued if you don’t complete a deal now, and then you’re going to get sued if you do complete a deal, because you’re going to get sued by these lawyers that are thrashing around looking for clients. They will automatically – this is a fact – they will automatically sue you after a deal was announced claiming you did not reach a high enough valuation for shareholders, it’s a given. All lawyers, all the lawyers know it’s going to happen. Yes, it happens. Then, if you don’t complete a transaction, then you get sued because you didn’t follow through on the process, and you affected the stock price. So, once this snowball starts, and I know, by the way, I’m a lawyer, but that wasn’t my business, right? I had no idea, so that was an experience that I do lay out in the book, and anybody who’s thinking about selling their company, right, might want to consider some of the things I discuss, because it can get it can get out of your control very fast,

Kara Goldin 28:05
yeah, definitely. Well, and I also, I love that you had that in your agreement as well, that that ultimately, if that you had to approve that the sale process,

Rick Rosenfield 28:19
well, that was in the PepsiCo agreement. In the final agreement, we didn’t have that. We were Larry and I were chairman, but we didn’t control the company. We didn’t have majority stock. We didn’t.. it was a public board. We.. we.. the other part was Larry and I ran it like honest lawyers, right? We can’t say I ever regret anything we did from a legal standpoint. We, we’ve, we, we dotted our i’s, across our t’s, and followed every rule in the sales process, and that’s sort of how it backfired. But there was no legal alternative to doing it the to the way we did it,

Kara Goldin 28:59
right? But I think that that’s a key thing for any founder out there who’s thinking, you know, make sure that you have good lawyers that are going to look at protecting you. Right, I would say it is

Rick Rosenfield 29:11
great advice at all levels to have a great lawyer, and for us, which is interesting, you know, there’s a statement that says a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, right? So we never did represent, we never did represent ourselves in any of this.

Kara Goldin 29:31
So, so interesting. Well, excellent job on the California Pizza Kitchen story. Also, the brand, a must-must read, Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of the California Pizza Kitchen. Fascinating, so exciting all along the way. I encourage everyone to go purchase the book, and just so inspired by you, Rick, on so many levels. So, thank. You for joining us today.

Rick Rosenfield 30:01
Thank you, Kara. Was really my pleasure.

Kara Goldin 30:03
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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