"It's not the concept that got us there. We were blessed to have created barbecue chicken pizza. But if we didn't know how to trust and empower and manage people, we would have died with one restaurant."
Two federal prosecutors walked away from their careers, mortgaged their homes, personally guaranteed a Beverly Hills lease, and borrowed a quarter of a million dollars — all to open a pizza restaurant. They had never run a business. Their first chef lasted one month. And yet California Pizza Kitchen became one of the most recognizable restaurant brands in American history.
Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen, built something that most entrepreneurs never do: a company where the culture was the product. The barbecue chicken pizza got people through the door. What brought them back — and what kept 14,000 employees loyal for an average of 14 years — was something harder to copy.
Rick and his partner Larry Flax distilled that culture into four letters: R.O.C.K. Respect. Opportunity. Communication. Kindness. It sounds simple. But they made it operational — through hiring decisions, firing decisions, training standards rigorous enough that one server famously said he studied harder for his CPK knowledge test than for his Harvard finals, and a commitment to doing the right thing even when it was costly. CPK became the first national chain to go non-smoking — not because of a marketing study, but because Rick and Larry walked outside during a management meeting, looked at each other, and asked: what right do we have to ask anyone to work in a smoking section?
Their partnership lasted 40 years, built on a principle neither of them violated: they never said "I told you so." Once a decision was made, it was theirs — not his or mine. That discipline, rare enough in any relationship and extraordinary among two trial lawyers with strong egos, may have been the invisible architecture behind everything else.
Rick Rosenfield is the co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen, which he built with partner Larry Flax from a single Beverly Hills location in 1985 into a national and international chain with over 14,000 employees before selling in 2011. Before CPK, Rick spent 13 years as a federal prosecutor and defense attorney. He is a lifelong friend of Larry Ellison and the author of The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza, with a foreword by Jack Carr, number one New York Times bestselling author.
Expert Action Steps:
- Live by R.O.C.K. — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness. Let these four values guide your hiring, your culture, and your daily decisions, not just your mission statement.
- Commit to perseverance over momentum. The path is rarely a straight line — it stalls, crashes, and restarts. Stay true to your vision through the cycles rather than abandoning it when circumstances get hard.
- Do the right thing. It is not always easy to do, but it is almost always easy to identify. Build the habit of acting on that knowledge even when it is costly.
Learn more & connect:
Rick Rosenfield: https://www.rickrosenfield.com
The California Pizza Kitchen Story (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com
Resources mentioned:
The California Pizza Kitchen Story by Rick Rosenfield — https://www.rickrosenfield.com
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield — https://www.stevenpressfield.com
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield — https://www.stevenpressfield.com
Jack Carr (foreword author, number one New York Times bestselling thriller writer) — https://www.jackcarrusa.com
R.O.C.K. culture framework (Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness) — discussed in The California Pizza Kitchen Story
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