{"id":7071323,"date":"2026-10-11T20:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T20:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071323"},"modified":"2026-10-11T20:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T20:14:23","slug":"bootstrapping-bbq-chicken-and-buyouts-how-california-pizza-kitchen-changed-pizza-cookout-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071323","title":{"rendered":"Bootstrapping, BBQ Chicken, and Buyouts: How California Pizza Kitchen Changed Pizza – CookOut News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. If you buy a product through an affiliate link, we may receive a commission at no cost to you<\/em>.<\/p>\n

People may not be aware of this but metro Detroit is ground zero for commercial pizza companies. Little Caesars, Domino\u2019s, Hungry Howie\u2019s, and Jet\u2019s all are companies from here.<\/p>\n

Growing up in the suburbs in the 80\u2019s, that style of pizza is all that I knew. There was no internet, and I didn\u2019t travel much, so I wasn\u2019t exposed to styles like Neapolitan or New York style. The only other style I had tried was Chicago Deep Dish, given the city\u2019s proximity.<\/p>\n

That all changed in 1996 when a new restaurant chain called California Pizza Kitchen (CPK for short) opened up at The Somerset Collection, a local upscale mall. I was in my teens at that point and anything branded as being from California was exotic and cool, and their pizza was unlike anything I\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n

They had a thinner crust and the ingredients were innovative. Their now legendary BBQ Chicken pizza had BBQ sauce, grilled chicken, smoked Gouda, and red onions. Who had ever heard of chicken and BBQ sauce on pizza?<\/p>\n

\"CPK<\/source><\/picture>
CPK BBQ Chicken Pizza<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It completely changed what pizza was for me, and I believe that it evolved how people viewed pizza across the country. I even think some amount of success of home pizza ovens is owed to the evangelizing that CPK did.<\/p>\n

While I was exposed to them in 1996, they started in California in 1985 from two founders, Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax. Rick just released a book about the journey titled The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza<\/a><\/em>, where it turns out that my experience with the restaurant was exactly their go-to-market strategy working.<\/p>\n

I loved the book, it was great combination of a founders\u2019 story, a business book, and a food book all wrapped together. For anyone else that reads lots of business texts like I do, the chapters were really digestible like Ben Horowitz\u2019s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When people think of founders, they think of Silicon Valley tech companies, but CPK started and scaled even before that. Learning about what led people to start businesses and how they scaled them is fascinating to me. If you like that too, you\u2019ll also love this book.<\/p>\n

I had to opportunity to interview Rick about his book, and he embodied the culture that him and his co-founder built at CPK. He was a super guy, personable, and still passionate about CPK to this day. We covered some of the stories that were in the book, but I\u2019ll do my best not to spoil too much of it.<\/p>\n

Career Switch and Bootstrapping<\/h2>\n

Rick Rosenfield was already a successful attorney when he decided to completely switch course and start a pizza restaurant in Beverly Hills, California. He attempted to do both things at the start, but his passion for CPK quickly pulled him out of his legal practice.<\/p>\n

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Step one is, we\u2019re going to do this ourselves. We\u2019re not going to need investments. How much is this going to cost? We bring the car, we\u2019ve got somebody who refers a contractor who\u2019s built a bunch of restaurants, successful ones around LA. We bring him in. We said, \u201cHow much is this going to cost?\u201d And he says, \u201cProbably about $250,000.\u201dSo we go, now we\u2019re on the hook. We realize you\u2019re still practicing law, right? And the first big step is, we sign the lease with personal guarantees. So that was the biggest step of all.<\/p>\n

the banker was mortified. \u201cOh my God, you guys are successful lawyers. You know, but if you\u2019re going into the restaurant business, you\u2019re out of your mind.\u201d Okay, but we had a good income and good practice, and we justified the loan for a quarter of a million dollars. Except, of course, We collateralized the loan with our homes.<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rick quickly learned what many founders realize. Starting a business can get much more expensive than planned, and once you\u2019re in it, you have to keep going.<\/p>\n

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Well, we learned pretty soon, as we\u2019re spending money hand over fist, that he didn\u2019t include kitchen equipment when he came up with the budget, because he\u2019s a contractor.\u00a0Their bid doesn\u2019t include kitchen equipment. That\u2019s always outside of the contract.<\/p>\n

So, oh, we\u2019ve got to buy kitchen equipment. Then, of course, the computer systems or training or inventory or all the other soft costs and hard costs. So, now we see it\u2019s a half a million dollars. Uh-oh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, this was critical. Now we\u2019re panicked. We are panicked. And we go to our lawyer, Bob Kahan, a friend who used to share offices with us. And he was our business lawyer. And we explained the problem. We needed to raise money. And then our biggest concern was, okay, what we don\u2019t want to do is give away all of our equity for this one restaurant.<\/p>\n

And at that time for us, which was very fortunate, Hard Rock Cafe was on a roll. And they were financing it by doing these limited partnerships. And investors were getting really rapid returns on Hard Rock. And that was sort of well-known around the city. And so Bob said, \u201cWell, why don\u2019t we structure it that you guys keep all of the equity, basically. You own the brand, you own the IP. We\u2019ll raise money from investors, but they\u2019ll only own the cash flow from this one restaurant.\u201d And so that\u2019s great. Is anybody going to invest in us, right? And Bob says, \u201cI will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That theme of needing money to scale continued throughout CPK\u2019s journey. Rick was the exact kind of founder you want to invest in though. The idea was a good one and it gave huge returns to all its early investors, but more importantly, Rick felt personally responsible for the investments. CPK\u2019s first turn from founder ownership was with PepsiCo, and it was a big moment.<\/p>\n

\n

The Pepsi deal meant as much for me to get that off my back, so to speak, to be able to say to our investors, the original ones, you made 22 times your money. If you put $20,000, like the first guy and my friend, Dr. Phil Yalowitz, he wanted to write the first check for $20,000. He got $424,000 back. So, emotionally, that was\u2014and Larry too, I don\u2019t mean it was just me. Larry felt it too. It\u2019s such a relief to fulfil your promises to your investors. That was absolutely as equally important to me as taking money off the table myself.<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jump Into Frozen Pizzas<\/h2>\n

One move that CPK made that was transformative to the company was they began selling their pizza in the frozen food aisle. That broadened its market, exposed more people to their style of pizza, and added tons of exposure for the brand. A big reason that it was successful is they made sure the quality of frozen pizza properly represented what they\u2019d built.<\/p>\n

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It stemmed from Nation\u2019s Restaurant News doing an interview with us and asking us, you know, are we going into frozen pizza. And at that time Puck [Wolfgang Puck] was doing his pizzas and frankly, I didn\u2019t think much of the quality of it. I felt that the reason was that he had put his name on it, but he allowed other people to do that, and obviously didn\u2019t really have control over the quality. I just thought it was a mistake for his brand. But I said to Nation\u2019s Restaurant News, \u201cYeah, we\u2019re looking into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then it brought a letter in those days\u2014print emails\u2014a letter from the president of Kraft Frozen that said, \u201cWhy would you even think of doing it without us? We\u2019d love to do it with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it took\u00a0two years, I think, for us working with Kraft, Larry and I, and at that time it would have been Brian Sullivan in the food, going back and forth to Kraft. They would send\u00a0people to CPK test kitchen and Larry and I would go back to their test sessions. And we didn\u2019t even negotiate a deal until we were satisfied that they had a product that we were proud of. So we were intimately involved in that.<\/p>\n

And then over the years, all the years that we were there with them, that same process would continue. Larry and I would meet with them in Chicago, or they\u2019d come out with us several times a year, and we\u2019d work on new menu items.<\/p>\n

In fact, the guy who\u2019s been running CPK food, Paul Pszybylski, who\u2019s been with CPK for 20 years, came. He was a part of the original Kraft team. And then we learned him over to CPK.<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Struggles and PE Ownership<\/h2>\n

With growth often comes changes in ownership, and that means different types of owners. CPK has certainly had that through their journey. They were bought by PepsiCo, owned by multiple PE firms, and went public where Rick and Larry jumped back in to right the ship.<\/p>\n

Changes in ownership brings in people that don\u2019t take the company as personally and have differing views on success. It can lead to scaling too fast, downsizing, and even leaving the founders out of important decisions entirely.<\/p>\n

Anybody who has been in business can relate to Rick\u2019s stories, both founders and non-founders. His passion for the brand and his partnership with his co-founder kept him going through all the good times and tough ones.<\/p>\n

\n

In the PepsiCo period that I described, when we sipped the Kool-Aid, we over expanded and they pulled the plug. They didn\u2019t really have a right to put anybody in to run the company. We left that. We were feeling pretty low about ourselves. So we recognised that. So we let them take a shot at running it. We got a new breath when Pepsi sold us to the private equity guys. And then we had a contract.<\/p>\n

Basically, we were still chairman and we agreed as part of the deal, they\u2019d put in a CEO. So we were good boys, so to speak. We followed the rules. So we played by the rules. They had a right to put in a CEO. We often disagreed with them, but we kept our hand in the game.<\/p>\n

He did drive us out of the business after it went public. And he tried to take more and more control. And then when he shifted up, we were a public company with a public board and they turned to us.<\/p>\n

And then I think in some ways that became, I don\u2019t know if it was the highlight of our career, but it was the redemption of our career. Like I said, I think you touched about how did we\u2014here we were, we were two lawyers. We had built this company. We had been sort of cast aside.<\/p>\n

Well, you\u2019re still in it. But I said, very importantly, we played by the rules. We let the guys run. We didn\u2019t have a legal right to control it. We would disagree. We didn\u2019t fight. We didn\u2019t create any board fights, no proxy fights. None of that. We were honest guys, right? But then when we were given a chance by the board to run the public company, we rose to the occasion. It took a little while, as I explained in the book, because we were feeling down about ourselves and our senior team had been reporting to other people. I don\u2019t know, they weren\u2019t quite ready to report to us again. But we built it because we were trustworthy.<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rick and CPK Today<\/h2>\n

CPK was acquired again in December, 2025 by Consortium Brand Partners, but this ownership cycle feels different. While not directly involved with the company anymore, Rick likes where the brand is headed.<\/p>\n

\n

I think they\u2019re smart guys, from talking to them. I think they truly are committed. I think they bought it for all the right reasons, and believe in the brand, believe it\u2019s an iconic brand. So it\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve been enthusiastic in 15 years.<\/p>\n

Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of CPK<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I recently made a trip to the same CPK I\u2019ve been going to for decades now, and I\u2019d have to agree with Rick. The quality of the food is still there, and I like some of the newer menu options that they\u2019ve mixed in with the classics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also remained a special restaurant for me too because, 30 years later from my first trip, I get to share the experience with my kids. Just like for me, it feels fancy and different to them. I recently introduced my daughter to The BBQ Chicken pizza and it was a hit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. If you buy a product through an affiliate link, we may receive a commission at no cost to you. People may not be aware of this but metro Detroit is ground zero for commercial pizza companies. Little Caesars, Domino\u2019s, Hungry Howie\u2019s, and Jet\u2019s all are companies from here. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7071324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[2872,74706,34882,531,14525,8791,15796,232274,5727,1114,1820,22409,50311],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7071323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barbecue","tag-bbq","tag-bootstrapping","tag-buyouts","tag-california","tag-changed","tag-chicken","tag-cookout","tag-cpk","tag-interview","tag-kitchen","tag-news","tag-pizza","tag-start-up"],"yoast_head":"\nBootstrapping, BBQ Chicken, and Buyouts: How California Pizza Kitchen Changed Pizza - CookOut News - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7071323\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bootstrapping, BBQ Chicken, and Buyouts: How California Pizza Kitchen Changed Pizza - CookOut News - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. If you buy a product through an affiliate link, we may receive a commission at no cost to you. People may not be aware of this but metro Detroit is ground zero for commercial pizza companies. Little Caesars, Domino\u2019s, Hungry Howie\u2019s, and Jet\u2019s all are companies from here. 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If you buy a product through an affiliate link, we may receive a commission at no cost to you. People may not be aware of this but metro Detroit is ground zero for commercial pizza companies. Little Caesars, Domino\u2019s, Hungry Howie\u2019s, and Jet\u2019s all are companies from here. 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