California Pizza Kitchen co-founder reveals story behind restaurant’s name

California Pizza Kitchen, with their nearly 50 locations across the Golden State and 200 world-wide, actually owe their name to Rhode Island.

Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax, who launched the first CPK in Beverly Hills in 1985, were considering more typical Italian restaurant-sounding names when they had dinner with a couple from Providence.

“They said, well, ‘With those other names, if you open in Providence, it would just be another Italian restaurant,’” Rosenfield recalled. “But if you open a California Pizza Kitchen in Providence, we want to go see what you fruits and nuts are up to.”

And that was all the convincing they needed.

“I absolutely believe that the California name resonated not only in California, but around the world,” said Rosenfield, whose book, “The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza,” was released July 21. “It has a connotation of being healthy and innovative and clean and energetic.”

As his book title reveals, Rosenfield and Flax were far from your typical restauranteurs when they birthed CPK. Rosenfield worked for the U.S. Department of Justice on cases before the U.S. Supreme Court before he and Flax launched their own criminal defense practice.

“We were both frustrated at practicing law and looking for a way out,” he recalled. “Everybody thinks they can operate and would love to own a restaurant. We came back from a frustrating four-month trial in San Francisco and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

The original concept was a pasta cafeteria.

“We went out to see something that was similar, and we noticed that people were ordering a slice of pizza with their pasta,” Rosenfield said. “We said, ‘Let’s do this new style of pizza that’s emerging, this California-style pizza. And let’s put that wood-burning oven in the center of the room.’”

Their pitch was “Spago for the masses,” and they even hired the legendary former Beverly Hills restaurant’s former pizza chef to create their menu.

“That menu had rabbit sausage pizza and lamb sausage pizza … so we had all these exotic pizza, but to his credit, he created barbecue chicken pizza and that was the game-changer,” Rosenfield said. “There was no ‘Spago for the masses’ because people didn’t care about the exotic pizzas. They cared about the barbecue chicken pizza. So Larry and I quickly realized that the secret was getting away from tomato sauce, but doing something that people could identify with in the taste.”

Like a true Angeleno, Rosenfield launched the flagship California Pizza Kitchen with his commute in mind.

“I lived six blocks from there,” he revealed. “We were also thinking that every upscale neighborhood needs a family restaurant that everybody can identify with. And that’s one of the real secrets of CPK was right from the beginning, it was a place that parents and kids and grandparents, everybody could agree upon.”

To learn how Rosenfield grew CPK from one to 265 locations, watch the latest episode of the California Post’s “California Roots” interview series on YouTube now.

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