By Tracy Morin
Rick Rosenfield wasn’t a seasoned restaurateur when he opened California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) with partner Larry Flax in 1985. But the pair nevertheless created a brand that helped change the American pizza scene—and later revolutionized the frozen food aisle.
Before entering the restaurant biz, Rosenfield had a successful law career, working at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., handling cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. He later served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, prosecuting major criminal cases, including organized crime, before transitioning into a private practice representing high-profile clients.
Despite his success in that field, Rosenfield and Flax made the unconventional decision to leave law and open the first CPK in Beverly Hills, California. What began as a single restaurant grew exponentially, becoming an international franchise with 265 restaurants worldwide and a frozen pizza line sold across more than 20,000 retail locations.
But the brand has also struggled since the founding partners sold it in 2011. CPK filed for bankruptcy in 2020 as another victim of COVID. Now again sold in late 2025, new owners Consortium Brand Partners hope for a comeback—and they’re looking for guidance from the original co-founder, Rosenfield, and the principles behind its original success.
On the heels of his new book release, The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza, Rosenfield spoke with PMQ about his storied career, how CPK changed the pizza game, and how he thinks the brand he co-founded must tweak operations to become a success story once again.
PMQ: Why did you feel that now was the right time to tell your story in a book?
Rick Rosenfield: I carry a lot of anecdotal stories of CPK but also an interesting law career. People have always said, with all the twists and turns, “You should write a book.”
Finally, what got to me was, I realized that so many people have stories of how CPK has affected their lives. They went as kids, they went with their parents, they went with their grandparents. And it struck me: It’s a feel-good story. It’s an entrepreneurial story, about the risks, the rewards, the ups and downs. It’s not a book I intended to be a business book—it’s not a “do this, do that” book. But what really emerges, and what I’ve really focused on and what the story is about, when you cut through all the twists and turns, is that CPK was more about the culture than it was about the barbecue chicken pizza. The barbecue chicken pizza was our hook, but what made us successful was the people.
By the time we sold the company, we had 205 company-owned restaurants with 14,000 employees. And it was almost 100% grown from within. We developed a culture of promoting people. It’s a culture that we ultimately landed on; it didn’t start that way. When we first started, we didn’t even know the word culture.
The CPK culture was ROCK: R for respect, O for opportunity, C for communication and K for kindness. And we had ROCKStar Awards. It may sound trite, but it wasn’t. We came up with it organically, and that was the success of CPK.
PMQ: Do you have any involvement in CPK now?
Rosenfield: I have not been with CPK for 15 years. We sold it to private equity guys. And then they, frankly, ran it into bankruptcy. They put substantial amount of debt on it. It went into bankruptcy during COVID. After COVID, for the last five years, it was really run by the consortium from the banks.
But, last December, it was sold to a new private equity group. It’s really the first contact I’ve had with CPK in 15 years. I’ve spoken to them somewhat extensively at this point, just in general. And they want to reinvigorate the brand, so it’s the first time that I’ve been optimistic in the last 15 years.
I’m just a very interested founder. One thing I said in my book: You can be a former CEO; you can’t be a former founder. I and my partner, Larry, care a lot about the legacy of the brand and the people.
PMQ: After its well-publicized struggles, do you have optimism regarding where CPK is headed now?
Rosenfield: I do. I actually read an article this morning that they’re putting CPK vending machines in the airports. And they look great. The article was saying that they expect they could put 1,000 vending machines at airports, college campuses, etc.
And there are a number of them in the airports now—they vend pizza and some pastas in 90 seconds. It looked great. It was very interesting. There’s one in Atlanta’s airport that I’ll see when I go through next. And I think the new owners are committed, both to the restaurants and to the brand.
PMQ: How do you see the legacy of the brand, 40-plus years after founding it?
Rosenfield: It is an iconic brand. And, of course, it has been significant for frozen pizzas. They’ve said that there are more CPK pizzas today sold in retail than there are pizzas sold in the restaurants. [Consortium Brand Partners] is very focused on international franchising and even franchising domestically. The most important thing is, they bought it with the idea of investing in it and returning it to its glory.
So I’m highly interested. We have not discussed me being a consultant with them, but I am speaking to them. And they’re very interested in my observations and what we think makes the brand great. But I say to them, “If you want to know what makes CPK successful, read the book.”
It’s all in the book: The barbecue chicken pizza got people in the door. It didn’t bring them back. What brought them back was hospitality, our service. We were pioneers—not only in reinventing pizza, with our innovative toppings, but we were pioneers in bringing polished casual dining to shopping centers. That didn’t exist when CPK started.
The book is titled How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza, but just as easily it could have been titled How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats and Where They Eat It. Because we identified upscale shopping centers as our target audience from the beginning, and that’s how we grew, and that’s how most people know us.
Larry and I made the statement very early to the top shopping center developers that restaurants would become the new anchors of shopping centers. And here it is—the department stores have faded, right? The massive retailers have faded, and everything has been converted as much as possible into lifestyle centers. Because that’s where people want to be—not during COVID, but post-COVID, it’s re-emerging again. People want to be out; they want to be outdoors and enjoying themselves.
CPK was driven into bankruptcy not by the lack of success of the restaurants. It was driven into bankruptcy by high debt—by the private equity playbook of overleveraging the company. And so it shrunk in size, in half, by the time it got out of bankruptcy and where it is today.
But the new buyers, Consortium Brands, they believe in it, and I believe in it. I think people have great memories of CPK, and I think it can be reinvigorated. There are still many people who have been with CPK for 35, 25, 30 years. It’s pretty amazing, really.
PMQ: Coming from a non-restaurant background, what other lessons did you learn along the way as you built the brand?
Rosenfield: When we sold, CPK had industry-leading low turnover. I mentioned promoting from within: When we sold the company, it had 32 regional directors with an average tenure of 14 years, when the company was 25 years old. Their average age was probably 35. We literally did promote from within. We built a business that was totally dependent on people.
Here we were, two clever lawyers—so we thought. We had come up with this idea of expanding this new style of pizza, California-style pizza. We thought, because we had this clever concept, we would be successful, and we risked everything to do that.
And then we got into business, and we realized it was going to be about people, not the concept. Because we all know what a high-pressure industry this is. Now, all of a sudden, we’re in it. We have no real hands-on restaurant experience. And, at that moment in time, the front of the house and the back of the house hated each other.
The back of the house was mostly Hispanic males, and the front of the house was Caucasian men and women. And we got in and said that wasn’t okay. We said, CPK is gonna be color-blind, religion-blind, education-blind. We don’t care. That’s what ultimately led to our ROCK philosophy. If you took those 32 regional directors that I talked about, they look like everything, and most of them had started as dishwashers, cooks, hosts or waiters. That’s how we grew the company, by [investing in] people.
I absolutely believe that in any brick-and-mortar business, such as restaurants, their only hope is their ability to inspire people. And that’s the secret. We talked about ourselves as a “work with,” not a “work for,” company. But the real point is, we meant it, and everybody believed it. Because everybody knows a phony. If you don’t walk the walk, you will be seen through.
But, no, we actually cared. And it was fun, because we created a place where people love to work. People were really proud to say they worked with CPK. For CPK to be successful today, it’s going to need to reinvigorate that culture.
PMQ: Since you’ve left CPK, so much has changed in the restaurant world. How do you see the industry today?
Rosenfield: I’ve been picked up in the news lately because I was quoted as saying, “I wouldn’t start California Pizza Kitchen in California today. I’d start it in Florida.” I was being tongue-in-cheek, but let’s take California. CPK is very proudly Californian, and they’re not going anywhere—they’re based in California and will continue to be based in California.
But there are challenges in California that are greater than in other states. Those are labor costs, regulatory costs, litigation costs, and all of those things that operators know. And bureaucratic delays and added building costs layered on by new regulations. All of those apply nationally, but they are exacerbated in California.
I absolutely never intend to suggest that somebody shouldn’t start a restaurant business in California, because they should. But the hurdles are great, perhaps greater than anywhere. A business owner needs to understand those costs going in.
Today, there are technologies that can help you manage those risks, so I think technology can be a benefit. But it’s not helpful when politicians or policy bash successful businesses and claim that they’re gouging. The reality is that when you layer on these added costs that I’ve described, what’s a business owner going to do to respond to that? Rising hourly wages, rising regulatory costs—[to combat] any of those, you can raise prices, you can cut hours, or you can seek efficiencies through technology. Or accept lesser profit—and no business is going to willingly accept lesser profit.
Generally, it’s going to get passed on to the consumer in higher prices. Those businesses that are successful will most likely pass most, if not all, of those costs onto the consumer. And then people will say, “What about affordability? Everything is so expensive these days.” When you make business more expensive to operate, the consumer is going to find that their affordability is challenged. That’s economics 101.
The mom-and-pops may be too fearful or unable to raise prices. Then these costs will drive them out of business. Or cause them to not start in the first place.
I’m not challenging the concept of a living wage. I absolutely believe people should be rewarded appropriately. But what I am suggesting is that it takes a combination of policy and businesses working together. Policy that ostracizes or bashes businesses is not helpful.
On the business side of things, it’s also important to not only stay aware of the brand and what it stands for, but also to make good business decisions—for example, not accruing too much debt along the way can help the brand survive over the long haul. That’s why I was pointing out that CPK’s bankruptcy was self-inflicted by the private equity buyers. It wasn’t inflicted because of the brand.
PMQ: Would you offer any other advice for owners on navigating the current restaurant landscape?
Rosenfield: I remain a big fan of the pizza industry. Pizza has been very good to me. I follow pizza very closely. And I watched a cable program interviewing an owner of a successful pizzeria in New Jersey, and he was lamenting, “I would love to expand, but I can’t, because I can’t find people that care as much as me.”
If I had been able to talk to him, I would have said, “No, with that attitude, you can’t expand.” Because as an owner, you’re never going to find people that care as much as you do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find people who care. You just have to care for them. And then you have to have the ability, which a lot of people do not, to not micromanage, but to trust and empower others. And the ability to, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify.”
PMQ: In the time that you’ve been away from CPK, what have you been working on?
Rosenfield: My wife and I had an upscale seafood restaurant in L.A., and it was successful. It took us a while to get there, and right as it was at its peak, COVID hit and put it out. We weren’t able to get a restart because of all the circumstances surrounding COVID.
And then I went into a business called ROCA, with Roman-style pizza. That didn’t make it, for a variety of reasons—but not because of the product, let’s put it that way.
I’m very, very much into pizza. Right now, I don’t have any plans to start anything. But I am interested in advising people.
PMQ: Is there anything else you would add about your journey in pizza?
Rosenfield: When we at CPK made our deal in the late ’90s, with Kraft, to go into frozen pizzas—it’s now owned by Nestle—CPK revolutionized the frozen pizza aisle. They called it “the CPK effect” in the frozen food industry, because then all frozen pizza started shifting to innovative and better toppings. It changed frozen pizza. It changed a lot of things, really, with the focus on better-for-you ingredients, premium toppings and so on.
So I’m very proud of what we did, of our influence, and I love the pizza industry. It’s fantastic, and there’s a lot going on. I’m excited to see all the activity in the business, particularly all the experimentation that’s everywhere now. It’s very interesting. I love the experimentation with different doughs and fermentations, and the better quality. I’m very much on top of that, and I love it. People love pizza. There’s more, and better, pizza than there ever has been.
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
