‘Florida Pizza Kitchen’ a sign of California’s toxic business climate

If California Pizza Kitchen were to launch today, it would be called “Florida Pizza Kitchen.” California just makes it too hard to do business.

That’s the view of Rick Rosenfield, who co-founded the iconic California restaurant in Beverly Hills with Larry Flax in 1985.

“California is less business-friendly today, and they make it apparent,” he told Fox News.

Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to boast about the size of California’s economy. He bristles at any attempt to point out how Republican-run Florida is doing much better, and attracting thousands of fleeing California residents each year.

But listen to California’s business owners. Especially small business.

Listen to the men and women who risk their savings for a dream — only to be hit with taxes they never expected, regulations they’ve never heard of, union fights they never asked for and lawsuits they never saw coming.

California has made life impossible for them, and unaffordable for almost everybody else.

Rosenfeld said that things have become particularly bad since the coronavirus pandemic.

That was when Gavin Newsom imposed the country’s first and worst shutdowns. Restaurants were hit particularly hard, since their business depended on customers walking through the door.

Many had to lay off staff and convert to delivery to survive.

After the pandemic, California didn’t try to make life easier for restaurants. It just kept on adding regulations and raising costs.

Rosenfeld specifically mentioned California’s new $20-per-hour fast-food minimum wage — which has already decimated restaurants in parts of the Golden State.

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California’s legislators keep adding new burdens to business for three reasons.

The first is that politicians refuse to stop spending, so they keep raising taxes. And brick-and-mortar businesses are sitting ducks.

The second is that some legislators are, at best, wide-eyed idealists, who think that each new law imposed on California businesses moves the planet one step closer to solving climate change or global inequality.

The third reason is that California politicians let lawyers run wild, writing legislation that creates all kinds of ways in which business owners can be sued by employees and by customers.

Florida has taken the opposite approach. No state income tax. Tort reform. A business-friendly climate.

And a governor who doesn’t waste time on speeches about how capitalism has failed.

“Florida Pizza Kitchen” sounds wrong.

But there are other businesses being started in Florida today that should have been started here — and that could be again, if our leaders ever get their act straight.