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Key Takeaways Rick Rosenfield and his business partner, Larry Flax, left their law careers for pizza in 1985.
Their business, California Pizza Kitchen, popularized barbecue chicken pizza.
Rosenfield credits his ROCK framework — respect, opportunity, communication, kindness — with turning restaurants into places people wanted to work.
Rick Rosenfield still remembers the day in 1985 when he and his law partner walked out of a San Francisco courtroom and decided they were done with practicing law. Within 24 hours, they had latched onto a risky new idea, California-style pizza, mortgaging their homes and personally guaranteeing a Beverly Hills lease for their new restaurant.
Rosenfield started his career in Washington, D.C., writing Supreme Court briefs for the Department of Justice after law school.
“Then I came to California, fell in love with the weather,” he tells Entrepreneur in a new interview, recalling his move to Los Angeles to become a federal prosecutor. That’s where he met his future business partner, fellow prosecutor Larry Flax.
Rick Rosenfield, left, and Larry Flax, co–founders of California Pizza Kitchen. Photo by Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The pair eventually left the U.S. Attorney’s Office for private practice, but the itch to build something beyond billable hours kept growing. “For 12 or 13 years, we were in private practice, but really wanted to get out of the practice, really wanted to go into the restaurant business, so we created California Pizza Kitchen,” Rosenfield says.
Betting on a niche
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