Many lives of Rick & Larry

That would be Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax, founders and still co-CEOs of California Pizza Kitchen. You might know the story: Two frustrated attorneys decide to ditch the law in the mid-1980s and invest $550,000 in a restaurant in Beverly Hills. That these two guys are still in charge - and still talking to each other - makes for one of L.A.'s longest-running acts. My profile of them in the August issue of Los Angeles magazine chronicles their ups and downs, which include having their salaries eliminated after a public equity firm took over in the late 1990s. They then engineered a palace coup a few years later. These days, Rosenfield and Flax are trying to cope in an economy where folks have cut back on their restaurant-going (the stock is down around 14 percent year to date)

They claim they’re not joined at the hip, but you would never know it. Rosenfield, with a slight build and a soft-spoken manner that borders on monotone, admits to not being the workaholic type. But every morning he goes through the previous day’s figures and then relays the highlights to his partner. He’s the numbers guy. The taller, white-haired Flax, who sounds a little like Dick Van Dyke (and also enjoys his days off), calls himself “the right brain.” He handles more of the marketing and design stuff. They’ll seldom go a few hours without talking (they can see and hear each other from their offices). To complete the circle, Rosenfield’s wife, Esther, has a creative bent, just like Flax, and Flax’s wife, Joan, is more analytical, just like Rosenfield. The four socialize frequently and even vacation together. Asking Flax and Rosenfield how they’ve managed to stay together all these years is like seeking wisdom from an old married couple.

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Flax and Rosenfield intend to re-up when their contracts expire at the end of next year. After that, who knows? Company founders who enter their sixties often have a hard time letting go—it’s the legacy thing—and with two partners the endgame becomes even more dicey. What if Rosenfield wants to leave but Flax prefers to stay on? What if the board starts itching to bring in younger executives? The issue of succession surfaces periodically, but Flax and Rosenfield brush it aside. When I invoke the “If you guys got hit by a truck tomorrow” question, the name they mention is Chief Financial Officer Susan Collyns. “In reality,” says Rosenfield, “the company would go on just fine.”