The California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) story is about more than pizza. It’s about resilience, adaptability, and two friends/former federal prosecutors who turned a crazy idea (barbecue chicken on pizza) into an American success story. In the new book, The California Pizza Kitchen Story , CPK co-founder Rick Rosenfield details how he and his co-founder, Larry Flax, created an international franchise with 265 restaurants worldwide and a frozen pizza line sold across more than 20,000 retail locations.

“I’d put away major organized crime figures, including the Detroit and St. Louis mob bosses who’d secretly owned Las Vegas’s Frontier Hotel, and successfully prosecuted a hijacker who had diverted a commercial jet to Los Angeles to protest the treatment of Mexican Americans—an episode that led to the first metal detectors in the Los Angeles federal courthouse,” says Rosenfield. “But there weren’t that many repeat customers in our line of work. Larry and I had a lightbulb moment: Most people had never even heard of California-style pizza, let alone tasted it. In a single day, we dreamed up a concept that would not only define our careers but change pizza forever: the ovens that baked it, the restaurants that served it, and even the frozen grocery aisle where our innovative pizzas inspired an industry.”

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