In this episode
Rick Rosenfield, Co-Founder of California Pizza Kitchen and author of the new memoir The California Pizza Kitchen Story, joins Greg Kihlström to explain how CPK was built from the inside out — treating internal culture as the source of the external customer experience. A former federal prosecutor and defense attorney who left law to open a restaurant with no industry experience, Rosenfield traces how a “work-with” (not “work-for”) philosophy became the ROCK culture — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness — how that culture was nearly broken by overexpansion under PepsiCo, and why, across a scale of hundreds of locations and 41 years, empowering and trusting people mattered more than number-crunching.
Key takeaways
- Build a “work-with” company, not a “work-for” company. Rosenfield’s rule is to surround yourself with kind people, because a single unkind presence drags an entire workplace down to its lowest level and stops it functioning.
- CPK’s culture became “ROCK” — Respect, Opportunity, Communication, Kindness. It emerged organically rather than from a whiteboard mission-statement exercise, and led to the internal “Rock Star Awards” used to decide who got promoted.
- A concept is not a business. Inventing barbecue chicken pizza was the easy part; the hard part was realizing the business was about people — trusting them and empowering them.
- “Do the right thing” as an operating mantra. CPK became the first national chain to go non-smoking, prompted by a manager asking how they could ask a server to work a smoking section.
- Promote from within, on values rather than credentials. Rosenfield describes CPK as “color blind, religion blind, gender blind, education blind” — its 32 regional directors averaged 14-year tenures because they upheld the standards.
- Overexpansion nearly broke the culture. PepsiCo’s blank-check push to build 50–100 restaurants a year from a base of about 25 led to cost and quality cuts and CPK’s lowest point; recovery depended on core people who still believed in the brand.
- Consistency at scale came from training and long-tenured leadership. Only three culinary directors led CPK across 41 years, and outside studies found CPK had the highest-income and highest-education customer of any chain in America — not just any pizza chain.
- License and franchise only with partners you trust and a product you’re proud of. It took two years with Kraft to get a frozen product worth putting their name on, and international franchisees had to be experienced operators the founders personally liked and trusted.
- The real inflection point for culture is COVID, not AI. Rosenfield calls the restaurant business inescapably human, and says the first step to turning any culture around is communication and respect: be a good listener, then react.
Chapters
- 00:53 — Cold open: who really owns your customer experience?
- 02:37 — Why Rosenfield wrote The California Pizza Kitchen Story
- 03:19 — From trial lawyers to founding CPK
- 04:51 — “Work-with” vs. “work-for,” and the birth of ROCK
- 07:50 — What ROCK stands for, and enforcing kindness
- 08:55 — Defining the company against PepsiCo’s “sell more pizzas” pressure
- 10:23 — The overexpansion era and CPK’s lowest point
- 11:49 — Restoring credibility with employees first
- 14:27 — Measuring culture with same-store sales
- 16:07 — Training and promoting from within
- 17:46 — Why real empowerment is so rare
- 19:03 — Scaling internationally, into airports and CPG
- 22:03 — Protecting culture in a remote and AI era
- 23:46 — The first step to turning a culture around
- 25:06 — Inside the book
- 26:02 — Staying agile
“Work-with” vs. “work-for”: why kindness is a business strategy
When CPK’s original pizza chef quit after a month, Rosenfield and co-founder Larry Flax — two lawyers with no restaurant experience — suddenly found themselves running the place and seeing tension between the front and back of house. Their response became a founding principle: this would be a company people worked with, not for. The practical logic is blunt. You want to surround yourself with kind people, Rosenfield says, because if people aren’t kind it brings everyone down to the lowest level and the operation can’t function. In the early days, he jokes, they even had to enforce kindness.
How ROCK became CPK’s culture — without a whiteboard
Rosenfield is pointed about where the culture did not come from. During the period PepsiCo owned two-thirds of the company, executives pushed them to write a mission statement like “sell more pizzas than anybody in the world” — which he rejected as Pizza Hut’s mission, not CPK’s. Instead, he and Flax defined the company in relationship to their team members, and that crystallized organically into ROCK: Respect, Opportunity, Communication, and Kindness. It wasn’t designed as a gimmick, he insists; it simply became how they decided who to promote — were they rock stars? — with kindness as the key.
A concept is not a business
One of Rosenfield’s sharpest lessons is the gap between having a great idea and running the operation behind it. He and Flax were bright lawyers who introduced barbecue chicken pizza to the world, but the moment they had employees, the business became about people. He frames it as the entrepreneur’s fallacy: the exciting concept is only the beginning, and gratitude toward the people who helped them from the start — all promoted from within, none brought in from outside — became central to how CPK operated.
How CPK measured culture at scale
Asked how you measure something as intangible as culture across hundreds of restaurants, Rosenfield admits they leaned on instinct more than metrics through the ’80s and ’90s — but the number that told the story was same-store sales. Every location, whether the chain had 20 or 200, was a serious investment and its own business: 100 or 200 little hands-on experiments, each answerable to whether it was bringing in more traffic, and if not, why not. Consistency across those locations, he says, came down to training — which weeded out people unwilling to uphold the standards — and promoting from within.
What nearly broke the culture: overexpansion
The most dangerous chapter, in Rosenfield’s telling, was the PepsiCo era. Handed a blank check and told to build 50 to 100 restaurants a year from a base of about 25, CPK over-expanded, got into trouble, and watched PepsiCo pull the plug — installing management that cut costs and quality. He recalls a manager in Miami rolling her eyes when he spoke about upholding standards, and calling Flax that night to say they were in serious trouble. Recovery came because they retained control over the sale to private equity and had core people who still believed in the brand and were willing to do the work to restore it.
Why COVID, not AI, is the real inflection point
Pressed on how these principles translate to remote teams and AI-assisted service, Rosenfield reframes the question: the bigger disruption, to him, is COVID rather than AI, because it accelerated remote work and turned the human dynamics of the business upside down. He describes the restaurant business as customer-sensitive and word-of-mouth-driven, insisting there’s no substitute for being hands-on — you can use every tool available, but in the end it’s about touching customers where they are. The first step for any leader trying to turn a culture around, he says, is communication and respect: be a good listener, hear what people are saying, and react.
FAQ
What’s the difference between a “work-with” and a “work-for” company? A “work-with” company treats employees as partners you choose to surround yourself with, prioritizing kindness and trust. Rosenfield argues it’s a business necessity — unkind people drag an entire workplace to its lowest level and keep it from functioning.
What does ROCK stand for at California Pizza Kitchen? Respect, Opportunity, Communication, and Kindness. It emerged organically as CPK defined itself in relationship to its team members, and became the basis for how the company promoted people, including its “Rock Star Awards.”
How did CPK maintain quality and culture across hundreds of locations? Through training that filtered for people willing to uphold standards, promoting from within, and treating each restaurant as its own business measured by same-store sales. Long-tenured leadership helped too — only three culinary directors in 41 years.
What was the hardest period for CPK’s culture? The overexpansion under PepsiCo. Told to build 50–100 restaurants a year from about 25, CPK over-expanded, then endured cost and quality cuts when PepsiCo pulled back — the lowest point for its culture, reversed only by core believers who restored credibility.
How should leaders protect culture in a remote and AI era? Rosenfield sees COVID and remote work as the bigger disruption than AI, and says there’s no substitute for a hands-on approach. His first step is communication and respect: be a good listener, hear what people say, and react.
About Rick Rosenfield
Rick Rosenfield is the co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen and a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney. He helped grow CPK to 265 restaurants and a national retail line while shaping a new era of American casual dining. His forthcoming memoir blends legal battles, entrepreneurial inflection points, and lessons in partnership and culture.
Rick Rosenfield on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickrosenfield
———- Resources ———-
California Pizza Kitchen: http://www.rickrosenfield.com
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Transcript
[00:00:53] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you: With brands being defined by every customer interaction, who’s really in charge of your customer experience, your C-suite or your front-line employees? Agility requires more than just the right technology. It demands a culture where empowered teams can make decisions and respond to customer needs in the moment. Today, we’re going to talk about building a brand from the inside out, focusing on the powerful connection between internal culture and external customer experience. We’re gonna explore how a reverse pyramid leadership model can directly impact customer experience and brand perception, translating core values into an operational framework that empowers employees and fosters accountability, and the principles of scaling a culture of empowerment
[00:01:39] Greg Kihlström: as a brand grows from a single location to a global presence. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Rick Rosenfield, co-founder at California Pizza Kitchen and author of the new book, The California Pizza Kitchen Story. Rick, welcome to the show.
[00:02:36] Rick Rosenfield: Thanks. Nice to be here.
[00:02:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to this conversation, definitely, and, you know, definitely recommend everybody checks out the, the book as well. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give, uh, you know, just a little background on yourself. We’ll get into some of the, some of the story, but, uh, you know, why did you, why did you feel it was the right time to share the ideas in your new book?
[00:02:55] Rick Rosenfield: Y- you know, it’s reached a point in, in my life where I think there’s a lot to share from CPK and the culture that we built. [00:03:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. [00:03:04] Rick Rosenfield: And it seemed to be time to tell the story, and s- you know, my, my whole life I’ve been a storyteller, and people have always said, “You should write a book.” Well, I didn’t, and now all of a sudden, I did. So, uh, it’s been a fun journey, and it’s getting to be a lot more fun.
[00:03:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, love it, love it. So yeah, why don’t we start at the, at the beginning, so to speak. What led you to co-found California Pizza Kitchen, and what would you maybe have done differently or even the same, knowing what you know now?
[00:03:33] Rick Rosenfield: Well, what caused my co-founder, Larry Flax, and I… The founder was, we were trial lawyers. We were former federal prosecutors, and then we were criminal defense attorneys for 13 years as partners.
[00:03:46] Rick Rosenfield: And we were tired of it. So like a lot of lawyers looking for an opportunity, and like a lot of people, a lot of… Think they could open a restaurant. Well, we felt we could open a restaurant, and we had come up with this whole new concept, this emerging style of California pizza, and we did it. We, uh, we mortgaged our homes, we signed the lease with personal guarantees in Beverly Hills, and we were in it full bore.
[00:04:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, wow, that, I mean, that’s quite a leap from-
[00:04:17] Rick Rosenfield: (laughs).
[00:04:18] Greg Kihlström: … from law to, to restaurants, right? So what… Were there other potential ideas that you explored, or was that… was it just a- a natural progression for you?
[00:04:27] Rick Rosenfield: We, we, we had one re- As long as we were partners, we had one restaurant idea after another. But some client would come along, write us a big retainer, and we’d be back practicing law.
[00:04:39] Greg Kihlström: Right (laughs).
[00:04:39] Rick Rosenfield: Well, after a long trial in, in San Francisco for about four months, Larry and I came back to our law office. We said, “Let’s do it,” and we were on our way.
[00:04:51] Greg Kihlström: Love that, love that. And so you built CPK on this philosophy of being a work-with company, not a work-for company. And I think probably many of us, um, know (laughs), know what at least the latter means. Um, for leaders in, you know, complex organizations, what’s the fundamental difference between working with a company and working for a company, and why is that distinction so critical?
[00:05:17] Rick Rosenfield: Well, well, for us, having no experience, and then we open this restaurant. We had this chef who was a noted pizza chef. He lasted a month. Now all of a sudden, we were running this restaurant. Now, that’s okay with us, but, but what we saw was tensions in the front and the back of the house, and it didn’t work for us. We were rational lawyers, right (laughs)? It’s like-
[00:05:42] Greg Kihlström: Right, right.
[00:05:42] Rick Rosenfield: … “Oh no, we’re never gonna be able to build a business.” So what happened, and I describe it as we saw the difference between a concept and a business.
[00:05:50] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:51] Rick Rosenfield: We thought… We were these bright lawyers. We came up with this great concept, and we introduced barbecue chicken pizza to the world. But now, we had people. We had to deal with people. And we became very grateful to the people who helped us from the beginning. Nobody from the outside, just ingrown, and we, uh, we didn’t talk in terms of, of work with or work for in those days. Eh, although that evolved pretty early. We wanted people to like us-
[00:06:22] Rick Rosenfield: … and that evolved ultimately into our, into what was our ROCK cult- culture, which we can talk about anytime.
[00:06:29] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and I, and I wanna dig in a little more. You know, I think that concept idea, I, you know, I think that ties back to, I, I just know from my own experience, the entrepreneur’s fallacy of, you know, you have this great idea and then you actually have to run the business also (laughs), right? So was that a… was it kind of a rude awak- like, as much as you had been, you know, done and doing law and, and all that, like, was it a kind of a rude awakening to all of a sudden be running a restaurant?
[00:06:58] Rick Rosenfield: It was, it was beyond a rude awakening. The day we fire… we fired the chef because we had to. He did… he crossed a line, and he-
[00:07:06] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:06] Rick Rosenfield: … came in and asked us to support him, and we said we can’t. And my wife, Esther, who’s our third co-founder, and Larry and I, we sat on the floor of our law office, which was next door, and we cried.
[00:07:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:20] Rick Rosenfield: Because now we were in it. So it was, it was frightening, but we got ahold of ourselves and we did what we, we, we knew we were gonna have to do this. And, and, yes, i- in the end, as I say, we, we really did and, and, and as we grew, it was all about people, ab- about trusting people, empowering people. But if we can talk a moment what evolved later into a philosophy or a culture we call ROCK.
[00:07:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:07:51] Rick Rosenfield: R-O-C-K. And it was organic. We didn’t… we just respect, opportunity, communication, and kindness. And coincidentally, that led to Rock Star Awards.
[00:08:02] Greg Kihlström: Mm. Nice.
[00:08:03] Rick Rosenfield: And we did-
[00:08:03] Rick Rosenfield: It sounds like a gimmick. It wasn’t created (laughs) as a gimmick.
[00:08:06] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:08:06] Rick Rosenfield: It was perfect ’cause that’s how we decided to promote people. Were they rock stars? And what was the key to that one? Kindness.
[00:08:16] Rick Rosenfield: So that goes to the work with/work for. You want to go to work with people who are kind. You want to surround yourself with people who are kind. If you’re in a work environment and people aren’t kind, it brings everybody down to the lowest level, and it can’t function. So we felt that from the beginning. At first, we had to en- we had to enforce kindness (laughs).
[00:08:38] Greg Kihlström: Right, right. Well, an- and it also sounds like y- you mentioned that the ROCK culture, it wasn’t something that you white boarded and said, “Hey, why don’t we come up with this gimmick, you know, to, to use, you know, to use that word,” but it’s something that happened org- i- organically, right? So is that-
[00:08:55] Rick Rosenfield: It was interesting. It was a period that PepsiCo owned two-thirds of us.
[00:09:00] Rick Rosenfield: And they were pushing us, “You’ve got to come up with a mission statement.” Like, “Like what?” we said. “Well, like, to sell more pizzas than anybody in the world.” “Oh no, no, no, you have Pizza Hut, they can do that. That could be their mission statement.” That wasn’t our mission.
[00:09:16] Rick Rosenfield: So we started, Larry and I, talking as, “How do we want to define ourselves?” And always to us, it was about defining ourselves in relationship to our team members.
[00:09:28] Rick Rosenfield: And that was real. That’s what CPK’s strength was its employees that loved to go to work and were excited, felt they were representing a great brand, and, and our mantra was always, “Do the right thing.” We were, we were the first national chain to go non-smoking.
[00:09:47] Rick Rosenfield: And we, and we did it because we couldn’t… because somebody asked us… a, a manager said, “How can we ask a server to work at a smoking section?”
[00:09:55] Rick Rosenfield: And Larry and I said, “That settles it (laughs),”
[00:10:00] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, so how, how do you… ’cause obviously, you know, you mentioned the, you know, you had a, a, a two-thirds owner. There’s a lot of pressure for… to turn profits, uh, obviously, sp- you know, it’s a for-profit business. How do you balance that, that cultural aspect and keep it strong without, you know, without… you know, how do you compromise in the right way, I guess, to, you know, to, to make everybody happy? (laughs)
[00:10:23] Rick Rosenfield: Well, well, that became a challenge. We went, we went through a lot of periods: private, public, privately owned two-thirds by PepsiCo, public, then private again.
[00:10:34] Rick Rosenfield: And, and it’s a challenge at every level. But that was… the, the most challenging period was Pepsi, when they bought in, gave us a blank check, and said, “Build 50 or 100 a year,” where we had 25 restaurants.
[00:10:49] Rick Rosenfield: So we quickly over-expanded because we were very naive and were sipping our own Kool-Aid.
[00:10:55] Rick Rosenfield: And now we got in trouble, and then they pulled the plug, and that was the hardest period of our life. That period when they pulled the plug, we had to lay people off, and then all of a sudden, they put in management and started cutting costs-
[00:11:11] Rick Rosenfield: … and quality. That was as low as we ever got, and that was the most challenging to our culture.
[00:11:18] Rick Rosenfield: It was… and- and one incident, I was speaking to managers in Miami, having dinner with them, which we ordinarily did, and I said, “You know, we’re s- we’re very committed to upholding our standards and quality,” and one woman manager sort of rolled her eyes at the other one like, “Does he really believe that?”
[00:11:36] Greg Kihlström: (laughs) Yeah.
[00:11:36] Rick Rosenfield: And I went back to the hotel and I called Larry and I said, “We’re really screwed.” And I used an expletive-
[00:11:43] Rick Rosenfield: … lot harder than screwed. But that was the low point, and we had to fight our way back, and we, we did.
[00:11:49] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, so what did… what did that look like? I know, you know, I know you said there, there were several iterations. But what did it look like to… I mean, it sounds like you and your, your co-founders were on the same page about, you know, priorities and stuff. But what did… what does it look like to kinda turn that around?
[00:12:06] Rick Rosenfield: … you have to have people that believe. In the end-
[00:12:09] Rick Rosenfield: … we had core people that believed in the brand that were willing to, to, to do the work.
[00:12:15] Rick Rosenfield: That, to restore it. But we got fortunate. Pepsi couldn’t spin us into yum because we’d had an agreement with them and we went to, we had control over the sale to private equity guys. Private equity guys, even though they put in their new CEO, we were able to work with him to restore the credibility. Because that was-
[00:12:37] Rick Rosenfield: … the, the issue wasn’t as much to me as our customers understood or lost cre- credit. It was our employees.
[00:12:46] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:46] Rick Rosenfield: And that, that’s-
[00:12:47] Rick Rosenfield: … was our, that was always who we, our core constituency, we always felt, was the people that worked with us.
[00:14:27] Greg Kihlström: at, obviously, you know, it sounds like you had a lot of conversations and, and had some interaction. But at some point, you also need to use metrics to, you know, how, like, how do you, how do you measure things like culture and, and, and things to make sure that, you know, when you’re, when you’re in the hundreds of restaurants, that you’re able to make sure you’re operating where you need to be?
[00:14:49] Rick Rosenfield: Well, that’s a great question. We ended up measuring a bit. But, but we didn’t from the beginning.
[00:14:58] Rick Rosenfield: We as, we, we used our instincts more than metrics. This was, you know, the mid-eighties, the mid-nineties, and on, on to 2000. And what-
[00:15:06] Rick Rosenfield: … our metric was same store sales.
[00:15:10] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:10] Rick Rosenfield: That tells you-
[00:15:11] Rick Rosenfield: … a lot. We have, we have to, 100, whether you had 20 restaurants, 50, 100, or 200, every restaurant was a serious investment. And every restaurant told a story. You could say, “How is that restaurant doing? Is it, is it bringing in more customers? It’s bringing in more traffic? If it is not, why not?”
[00:15:31] Rick Rosenfield: So it, it is literally, there’s 100 little hands-on experiments, or 200 little… But each one is a business.
[00:15:40] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and, ’cause I, I would imagine that every location is gonna be a little diff- you know, but what’s the, what’s your rule of thumb for, you know, there’s gotta be consistency. You know, if somebody travels from Miami to San Francisco, they wanna have the same, they wanna have the same quality of food and, and general experience. And yet, to your point, there’s gonna be different, different aspects. Like, what’s, how do you b- how do you find the right balance there?
[00:16:07] Rick Rosenfield: The, for us, it was in training.
[00:16:10] Rick Rosenfield: So we did so- we were in, we were e- early pioneers in casual full service upscale dining. And when we sold the company, it wasn’t our study, it was o- o- other outside groups. CPK, we had 200 plus restaurants, had the highest income level customer and the highest education level customer of any chain in America. Not pizza chain, any chain in America. So how do we do that? We did it by training people and from the beginning. And that weeded out people who weren’t willing to do the work. So the people that upheld our standards, and the other thing, that we promoted from within. So we had 32 regional directors when we
[00:16:55] Rick Rosenfield: sold the company for the last time I was involved in it. They had an average tenure of 14 years.
[00:17:02] Greg Kihlström: Wow.
[00:17:02] Rick Rosenfield: And probably an average age of 36.
[00:17:06] Rick Rosenfield: So, so who were these people? These were people that grew in. Why did they get promoted? They got promoted because they upheld our standards. Before we had Rock, Larry and I, from the beginning, we said, “CPK is color blind, religion blind, gender blind, education blind. We don’t care. We care, do you care about people and can you be part of our team and make it better?”
[00:17:30] Rick Rosenfield: And, and that’s, was, that’s, it was sort of self-fulfilling that, that we promoted the right people, we trusted the right people. And everybody was committed because they knew from us that we were committed to quality above all.
[00:17:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and that, that seems to be, it seems to be a consistent with, you know, category leaders and, you know, the, the brands that we talk about as having high stan- it, there does seem to be this, this consistent trend of empowering employees, empowering teams to do the right thi- obviously, you know, to your point, great training and having them understand what the values that you want. …to, to have for the, for the org are important, but that empowerment seems pretty critical. Wh- why do you think that so few brands real- you know, the, the ones that do, we tend to talk about (laughs) because they’re, they’re, we can probably count them on a few hands. But, you know, wh- why is it so rare that, that brands would really do that?
[00:18:30] Rick Rosenfield: Well, I think this has something to do … A very self-serving statement, perhaps, with founder-led companies.
[00:18:37] Rick Rosenfield: That, that growing it organically from the beginning is different than coming from the outside. And you ca- and you can measure yourself to death, and you can number-crunch to death.
[00:18:48] Rick Rosenfield: So we weren’t number-crunchers. We, we were intuitive.
[00:18:54] Rick Rosenfield: And that intuitiveness was how we promoted, it’s how we viewed life, and, and it was, it was very hands-on.
[00:19:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, as, as CPK expanded internationally into the retail CPG space, what does translate into, into, you know, particularly the, the retail space ’cause internationally, I would, I would imagine there’s some, uh, similarities with, with domestic, but, you know, how, how does a brand adapt to measuring and maintaining that cultural integrity even when it’s different markets and, and business models?
[00:19:33] Rick Rosenfield: Th- that’s a great question, and I think it also does apply to international. So, the thing that a lot of people are not aware of is that every CPK they went into in the US was company-owned, with the exception of the Mirage, which was owned by … Which was a franchise that Steve Wynn, who was our earliest large investor when we had one restaurant.
[00:19:56] Rick Rosenfield: Everything else was company-owned, so we were very vigorous as how we felt we could uphold the standards. We didn’t want to give it up. First time we had to consider, though, what happens, we’re being approached by all these international franchises, franchisees. So who, who meets the test? For us, it was people like us. We wanted, one, they gotta be k- they gotta be r- experienced operators, and we had to like them-
[00:20:23] Greg Kihlström: Right? (laughs)
[00:20:23] Rick Rosenfield: …so we could trust them. So that became somewhat easy. Then came the airports. HMS Host. So that’s a different experience, so we had to accept that there was going to be a different experience in the airports, and that could affect us. But we, we reasoned that people would recognize that there’s going to be a different experience in the airport.
[00:20:47] Rick Rosenfield: And we dealt with HMS Host, and we got many promises on how they were gonna deliver and uphold the quality, and all these years later, they did a great job.
[00:21:00] Rick Rosenfield: And then you get packaged goods. With Pepsi, I’m sorry, with Kraft, when we did the frozen, it took us two years to get a product we were proud of, before we signed a deal. We said, “We won’t make a deal until we have a product that we’re willing to put our name on.”
[00:21:17] Rick Rosenfield: And they were committed to it. So another thing, by the way, about cos- consis- consistency, Larry and I really, uh, Larry more than me, but he loved to create. He, he, and, and, uh, that was his, uh, pizzas and menu items, et cetera. Uh, the barbecue chicken chop salad (laughs) that was his, and the Thai Crunch, but, but in the 41 years, there’s only been three peak culinary directors that we had worked with.
[00:21:44] Greg Kihlström: Oh, wow.
[00:21:45] Rick Rosenfield: One for the first 14, then Brian Sullivan, who was there 30 years.
[00:21:50] Greg Kihlström: Wow.
[00:21:50] Rick Rosenfield: And Paul Sobilsky, who’s there now, has been there 18 years.
[00:21:54] Rick Rosenfield: So that’s one reason for the food quality. It’s, CPK’s gone through different iterations, but the food quality’s always been great and still is.
[00:22:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. So I wonder, you know, what, what advice you might have for, you know, for other brands, even, even outside of the restaurant industry, you know, with, with increasingly … Even across the board, you know, increasingly digital, increasingly remote teams, AI-assisted customer service, you know, how does this translate to different types of environments and, and, you know, how would, how would you advise an, an organization to, to keep those principles?
[00:22:34] Rick Rosenfield: Oh, I, I think it is the most challenging period I’ve ever seen, and I, I, the inflection point to me is less, uh, less AI and more COVID.
[00:22:45] Greg Kihlström: Hm.
[00:22:45] Rick Rosenfield: That COVID changed-
[00:22:47] Rick Rosenfield: It, it took this trend of working remotely, uh, uh, away and, and exacerbated it. And th- it turned everything upside down. So the only thing I can say, I’m a hands-on guy.
[00:23:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. (laughs)
[00:23:02] Rick Rosenfield: And w- we built it as a hands-on organization, and I don’t think there’s any substitute for that. I don’t think there’s any substitute. This is a … The restaurant business is a human business. It’s-
[00:23:16] Rick Rosenfield: …customer-sensitive. That it’s word of mouth, it’s getting people to want to come back, not to just try it. You can’t do that remotely.
[00:23:27] Rick Rosenfield: This is a … You have to be touchy-feely and serve your customer and, and fight like heck to keep that as your work ethic, and, and every tool in the world you can use, but in the end, yep, this business is about touching customers where they are.
[00:23:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And f- and for those, those orgs out there that, you know, they, they want to do this, but maybe they’re, maybe they’re in one of those, those rough (laughs) periods that, that you’ve, you know, described, uh, being through, what, what’s a first step that they can take to, you know, kinda turn things around, you know, to start listening to their employees more, you know, all, all those kinds of things?
[00:24:08] Rick Rosenfield: It’s, it’s, it’s … You, you just said it. It’s communication and respect. So of those of, of ROCK, communication or kindness is the given, right, the lowest point so to speak. But communication and respect. Everything is about communication. It’s being a good listener and having people trust, trust you. That, and-
[00:24:32] Rick Rosenfield: … you get that by listening and then reacting. And, and that’s my, that is my message: Be a good listener, and, and hear what people are saying and react. And that, that is, that’s what’s changing, and so you have to adapt to that.
[00:24:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Well, um, Rick, thanks so much for joining today. Really appreciate it. And, um, you know, I did mention you have the, the book. Why don’t you give us a, a taste of, you know, what, what does that include and, and, uh, you know, what’s the, what, what are some of the themes in it?
[00:25:06] Rick Rosenfield: Well, it is the California Pizza Kitchen story from start to finish: the good, the bad, the ugly, the transitions. And th- and then it’s Larry’s and my l- life as lawyers and some fun cases, what we prosecuted and defended. And then it has some of my own personal stuff because it’s my memoir. I put the personal stuff and the law stuff later. I called it a prequel. Because the story is the CPK story; I didn’t want people to get bored with my personal story and, and not read the real story. So, uh, it, it has a lot. It covers a lot of ground, I think. And I think there’s things that can be learned and people can pick one thing from it that can be helpful. It’s worthwhile.
[00:25:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, yeah, definitely recommend everybody, uh, picks that up. And last question for you before we wrap up here: Uh, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:26:02] Rick Rosenfield: Well, I’m no longer working with CPK or, uh…
[00:26:05] Rick Rosenfield: So what I’m doing now is this. And this is my new occupation is talking to people and talking about the, the book, but talking about what’s in the book and hoping that I can have an effect on people’s lives because much of s- much of this transfers outside of business into personal life as well.
