California Pizza Kitchen founders have a new food project in the oven In the 2 1/2 years since selling California Pizza Kitchen, the popular chain he helped found in 1985, Richard L. Rosenfield has been golfing, fishing, hunting, pursuing hobbies and otherwise staying off the restaurant industry's radar. Not so much for Larry S. Flax, Rosenfield's best friend and business partner of four decades, who's been jetting around the world hunting for a new food project. Turns out he didn't have to go far for ideas. Sometime in the second half of 2014, Flax and Rosenfield said, they plan to revisit pizza by launching a line of fast-casual pie joints. The former lawyers turned pizza moguls will compete in a fast-growing sector that includes brands such as Blaze Pizza, backed by former California First Lady Maria Shriver, and 800 Degrees, from Umami Burger kingpin Adam Fleischman. In July, food industry data firm Technomic Inc. dubbed made-to-order pizza the "next big growth niche," taking after the "better burger" trend. "We look at this proliferation of Chipotle-like pizza restaurant concepts ... and the truth is, we think a lot of them will be very successful," said Flax and Rosenfield as they sat in their new Beverly Hills office overlooking their original CPK store. "But ours will be different than the others'," Rosenfield said. This is not conceptual for us, this is full speed ahead. So far, their new venture remains mysterious. The duo, cautious of copycat competitors, is vague on the details, having shared them with only their wives and a few business intimates. The food will be "moderately priced," Flax said. And don't call it an assembly line - the restaurants will feature a two-tiered menu with a selection of pre-designed signature pizzas and another section enabling patrons to customize their own pies. There will be a wider range of options than competitors offer, he said. Rosenfield and Flax said they want to offer healthful ingredients. They won't say, however, whether they'll also offer sides such as salads and breadsticks. They're still playing around with possible names and need to hire a designer for the logo. They have a chief executive picked out, but he hasn't yet informed his current employer. In the next few days, they plan to tap their vast real estate network to start finalizing "high profile locations" in retail and lifestyle centers and traditional malls. And that's just Plan A. Once the initial pipeline of stores is up and running, the team intends to start soliciting franchisees. It's a change of pace from CPK, which outside of rare deals with early investor Steve Wynn and others, liked to keep its restaurants company-owned. "It will be a DNA change in a sense," Rosenfield said. The unnamed concept will feature pizzas with Thai chicken, barbecue and pepperoni, like the ones they created for CPK. Still, the pair said the two chains won't go head to head. "We did not want to go and directly compete with our baby," Flax said. That's not our competitor - we're not intending this to be the fast-casual version of CPK. We are now going into a different segment. Adds Rosenfield: "Nobody will confuse it with CPK." In 2011, the pair sold CPK to San Francisco private investment firm Golden Gate Capital for about $470 million. At the time, the chain had 265 locations in the U.S. and abroad. Though Rosenfield said he and Flax "would've been happy to be involved," the new owners decided the founders weren't needed. The parties split amicably and haven't had any contact since. "We all hugged," Flax said. It was a good deal. We did very well financially with CPK. After departing, Flax became drawn to the "exploding" fast-casual industry, which offered better fare than the fast-food sector and a simpler model than the struggling casual sit-down segment, which includes CPK. In the second quarter, traffic to fast-casual restaurants jumped 8% year over year, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.