California Pizza Kitchen Grows

In the second quarter, the company's four new locations included two new full-service restaurants that it opened in Omaha, NE and Queens, NY, as well as one of its ASAP formats in Culver City, CA. The fourth location was opened by the company's franchise partner, Golden Pillars, which opened a new full-service restaurant in Hong Kong, China. For the third quarter, the company expects to add three new full service restaurants and one new CPK/ASAP.CPK reported net income of $6 million, or 30 cents per share, compared with about $6.2 million and 32 cents a share for the same period last year, but a one-time charge this year reduced earnings that would have been higher. Sales climbed approximately 14.1% to $136.2 million, with comparable restaurant sales increasing 4.8%.

Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax, co-CEOs of California Pizza Kitchen, described the quarterly results as especially good in light of "a relatively difficult period for many in our industry." The two founders of CPK attributed the higher comparable sales in the quarter to a number of factors, including "menu innovation."

In addition to its full service restaurants and its ASAP format, CPK says that its LA Food Show brand will expand too. The ASAP and LA Food Show brands "will certainly evolve, and as these concepts mature we believe we'll have the advantage of having brands and concepts in a broad range of locations," Rosenfield and Flax said.

California Pizza Kitchen Inc., founded in 1985, has expanded to 165 are company-owned and 31 franchise or licensed locations. The company also has a licensing arrangement with Kraft Pizza Co., which manufactures and distributes a line of California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas.