California Pizza Kitchen co-founder says he wouldn’t launch chain in state today
California has become so hostile to business that even the man who built California Pizza Kitchen says he wouldn’t start the iconic chain there today.
Rick Rosenfield, who co-founded the restaurant brand with Larry Flax in Beverly Hills in 1985, said Florida, not the Golden State, would be his first choice if he were launching the company now.
“If it were me today, I would open in Florida before I would open it in California,” Rosenfield told Fox News.
“California is less business-friendly today, and they make it apparent.”
The chain, famous for its California-style pizzas and its signature barbecue chicken pie, has grown to 185 locations, many of them still in California.
But Rosenfield says the state that once helped define the brand has become a far tougher place to do business.
He said California was “the greatest place to do business” a decade ago, but believes conditions deteriorated after the COVID-19 pandemic, pointing to labor shortages, soaring costs and the state’s fast-food minimum wage law.
California Pizza Kitchen was among the restaurant chains battered by the pandemic as customers stayed home, ultimately filing for bankruptcy protection in 2020.
Rosenfield himself relocated to Florida in 2024, according to the Los Angeles Times, and said the difference between the two states has been impossible to ignore.
“Florida is quite friendly.”
“There’s less bureaucracy in Florida, and there’s more bureaucracy in California, and that’s basically my experience,” he told the outlet.
His criticism echoes a broader corporate flight from California that has reshaped the state’s business landscape.
McKesson Corporation and Charles Schwab moved their longtime San Francisco headquarters to Texas in 2019.
Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise followed in 2020, while Tesla shifted its headquarters in 2021.
In 2024, Chevron, SpaceX and X also relocated their headquarters to Texas, with Elon Musk and the 145-year-old energy giant citing regulatory and political frustrations.
Even so, Rosenfield said California’s image was once one of the company’s greatest assets, and a key reason the restaurant stood out from the competition.
When he and Flax were weighing names for the new concept, advisers argued that a traditional Italian name would blend in.
“They said, well, ‘With those other names, if you open in Providence, it would just be another Italian restaurant,’” Rosenfield told The California Post. “But if you open a California Pizza Kitchen in Providence, we want to go see what you fruits and nuts are up to.”
The argument won them over.
“I absolutely believe that the California name resonated not only in California, but around the world,” Rosenfield told The Post. “It has a connotation of being healthy and innovative and clean and energetic.”
Rosenfield’s book, The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza, was released July 21.
