EP801: Rick Rosenfield - The California Pizza Kitchen Story
"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."
Most people who know California Pizza Kitchen know the barbecue chicken pizza. Fewer know that the two men who built it were federal prosecutors who had never run a restaurant, borrowed a quarter million dollars, mortgaged their homes, and lost their first chef after one month.
Rick Rosenfield, co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen, joins Nicky to tell the full story — from a single Beverly Hills location in 1985 to a 14,000-employee national brand sold in 2011. What he describes is less a business story than a people story: how two lawyers with no industry experience figured out, on the fly, that culture was the actual product. The barbecue chicken pizza brought people in the door. The R.O.C.K. values — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness — brought them back, and kept 32 regional directors on board for an average of 14 years each.
Rick and Nicky get into the mechanics of a 40-year partnership that worked, including the one rule Rick credits most: they never said "I told you so." They dig into high standards as a hiring filter, the decision to go non-smoking before any other national chain, what it means to be a work-with company instead of a work-for company, and why a great concept is not enough without the people to carry it.
Rick closes with three pieces of advice drawn from four decades of building something real — all of them applicable well beyond the restaurant business.
- 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.
2. 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.
3. 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) — https://www.jackcarrusa.com
R.O.C.K. culture framework — discussed in The California Pizza Kitchen Story
Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
