Pie fight: California Pizza Kitchen's frozen fare bucks Puck.CALIFORNIA Pizza Kitchen California Pizza Kitchen (NASDAQ: CPKI, known within the food industry as CPK) is a casual dining restaurant chain that specializes in California-style pizza. The restaurant was started in 1985 by attorneys Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax in Beverly Hills, California, Inc.'s frozen pizzas have a kick, one that's walloping the competition. It's a frigid lineup that includes spicy Jamaican jerk chicken, mixed Portobello por·to·bel·lo or por·ta·bel·la or por·to·bel·la n. pl. por·to·bel·los or por·ta·bel·las A mature, very large cremini mushroom. [Origin unknown.] mushroom, Siciliaia, white and Thai chicken--all of which are muscling offerings by Wolfgang Puck Wolfgang Johann Puck (born Wolfgang Johann Topfschnig on July 8, 1949) is an Austrian-American celebrity chef, restaurateur, and businessman based in Los Angeles. Worldwide Inc. and other competitors off the shelves. The Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. restaurant company, best known for its successful chain of sit-down eateries, recently has made major inroads inroads Noun, pl make inroads into to start affecting or reducing: my gambling has made great inroads into my savings inroads npl to make inroads into [+ in the supermarket aisles. Its premium thin-crust pizza is far removed from the cardboard-like varieties that have dominated the sector. California Pizza's frozen pizza sales are expected to triple this year and the company continues to add new items, with garlic chicken being one of the latest entrants. "If you look at it, particularly in frozen pizza, it is really the thin crust that has been driving the growth," said Chad Mulder, the California Pizza brand manager at Kraft Food Inc., which began licensing the company's products in 1997. "Our presence is much bigger than it ever has been." California Pizza' s frozen pies racked up more than $70 million in sales last year for Kraft foods Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) is the largest food and beverage company headquartered in North America and the second largest in the world after Nestlé SA. The Philip Morris Company (now known as Altria Group), a company that produces tobacco products, acquired Kraft for . That's a nearly 55 percent leap from $45.3 million sales in 2002, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. data provided by Mintel International Group Ltd. For California Pizza, those sales have helped bump up the franchising and licensing revenues it collects to nearly $5 million in fiscal year 2005 from $3.7 million the prior year. At the same time, Mulder said Kraft has stopped tracking Puck frozen pizza sales because they have "dwindled down to almost nothing." Dana Moncrief, a Puck spokeswoman, suggested that the chef's foray into the frozen pizza coolers isn't over. "We have some things in the works, but it is not something we are prepared to talk about now," she said. Still, California Pizza's slices don't have the freezers completely to themselves. Other mainstream food companies have been pushing into the premium frozen pizza category. Freschetta, owned by Schwan Food Co., maker of Red Baron and Tony's frozen pizza, is taking on California Pizza with its Brick Oven items, counting BBQ-style chicken, Thai chicken, and smoked ham and Portobello mushrooms among its offerings. BY RACHEL BROWN Staff Reporter |
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