Shuttering a successful law practice to run a pizzeria may not seem like the safest bet, but Larry Flax (left) and Rick Rosenfield (right), founders and co-chairmen/CEOs of California Pizza Kitchen, have never been afraid of long odds. Partners since 1973, Flax and Rosenfield hadn't planned on abandoning the courtroom altogether when they opened their first restaurant in Beverly Hills, California in 1985. That decision was made for them.

"The law firm never got another client after we opened a pizzeria next to it," says Rosenfield. But if potential clients were reluctant to retain the services of restaurateurs, lenders had no problem trusting a couple of lawyers. "[Being lawyers] gave us a lot of credibility during the fundraising stages," says Rosenfield. So with a $250,000 loan, and a small group of family and friends on board as investors, Flax and Rosenfield let their bet ride.

Already chefs in their own homes, the two had originally planned to open a pasta restaurant. Their minds were changed during a visit to a pasta-centric restaurant in nearby Glendale, where they noticed more customers eating pizza than pasta. With the burgeoning popularity of California-style pizza, Flax and Rosenfield saw an opportunity.

"We aimed to create a third kind of pizza," says Flax, alluding to the debate between New Yorkers and Chicagoans over the merits of their respective pies. "California Pizza was a canvas we could paint on."

So Flax and Rosenfield set to work filling their canvas, ultimately settling on a thinner crust pizza with highly non-traditional toppings, many of them bespeaking the company's California roots. But their piéce de resistance, the barbecue chicken pizza, didn't reveal itself right away.

Added to CPK's menu as a whimsical dish-a counterpoint to the restaurant's more gourmet pizzas-barbecue chicken pizza quickly became a hit, eventually accounting for 50% of CPK's sales. "We discovered that we could experiment with pizza the way Baskin-Robbins experiments with premium ice cream," says Flax. "In a way Americans could identify with."

Flax and Rosenfield signed the lease for their second restaurant six months after they opened their first. With the doors to their law practice shut, and a restaurant that, while popular, had yet to show any actual profit, Flax and Rosenfield were banking on faith.

The gamble paid off. The partners, and the 300 investors they had attracted in the seven years since CPK began, were already in the process of going public when PepsiCo bought a 50% share of the company for $97 million in 1992. The business skyrocketed. There are now 213 California Pizza Kitchens worldwide.

Of these, 182 are company-owned and 31 operate under franchise or license agreements. Twenty-two years into their big idea, Flax and Rosenfield still develop their own recipes and taste every dish. It is also telling that CPK's 33 Regional Directors have spent an average of 13 years apiece with the company. Many started as cooks or hosts. "We always felt that the best way to run a company was to deal well with people," says Flax.

Rosenfield agrees. "If our employees are happy, that will transfer to our customers. All the success we've had is due to the people we work with."