EP816: Rick Rosenfield - How To Scale to 9 Figures

And it, and [clears throat] and it took off, and all of a sudden, developers from all around the country wanted us.

And so we said, "You know, shopping malls seem to be a good place for us," and we started building in shopping malls.

Then the greatest shopping malls in America came after us, and so we changed the way...

You know, the book is entitled, uh, The California Pizza Kitchen Story: How Two Federal Prosecutors Changed the Way America Eats Pizza.

But in reality, we changed the way America eats and where they ate it because we became the pioneers in bringing upscale, casual family dining to shopping centers across America and to upscale locations.

And then others followed us into what became a phenomenon, which is they ultimately ended up calling it polished casual dining.

And there were a lot of secrets, and it was more than barbecue chicken pizza.

It was that we built a culture from day one about the people because it was very interesting as we got in it.

You know, we thought we were these two clever guys, and we were, that had come up with this concept, this idea of putting-- getting away from tomato sauce and have innovative and ethnic toppings on pizza, and we thought, "Wow, that would make us a success." In fact, I wrote, before we opened the first restaurant and I wrote a business plan for the bank, and I had no idea about business plans, but I sat down at my word processor in the office, and I wrote it out.

I said that California pizza would be the third style most-- third of the most important styles of pizza in America.

There was New York, and there was Chicago, and the third is going to be California-style pizza, and it's going to be defined by however California Pizza Kitchen defines it.

Now, being Jewish, that would-- people would say, "That's chutzpah," right [laughs] Which it was.

We had no reason to believe that, and it was.

But ultimately, we got in this business, and all of a sudden, we realized that it was never going to be successful based on a concept.

It was going to be based on people, and we needed people to pull off our vision.

And, and that really became the story that I'm, I'm really talking about today, is not...

Yes, barbecue chicken pizza and our innovative toppings provided the platform for our success.

But the real success that let us grow to 14,000 people, almost all of our management promoted from within, was that we, what we developed a culture.