![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lately we've been dining out at California Pizza Kitchen as part of our regular rotation. It's kind of a blast from the past for us as I don't think we ate at a CPK together for 20 years. It used to be a thing we did on the regular, especially when we lived in Los Angeles (the chain's home) 20+ years ago. But then through a combination of moving back to Silicon Valley, where there wasn't a CPK close to us, and the chain itself seeming to shrink the number of restaurants, and... oh, yeah... the fact that Hawk seldom wants to eat pizza, we didn't set foot inside a CPK for years.
A few years ago a new CPK opened up just off Lawrence Expressway, a few miles away from our home. For a while we never went because, again, pizza wasn't an "us" thing. But then I got Hawk to humor me once or twice when I had a jones for it. She grinned and bore it through eating pizza a few times. By the third time or so she decided, "Screw their pizza, I'm getting a salad"... and a wonderful thing happened. She found their salads are really good!
That put CPK back into the mix. Now it's a sit-down restaurant not too far from home that we can both agree upon because there are things on the menu we both definitely like. But what really got it into part of our regular rotation was the Costco connection.
The Costco connection? Is that like The French Connection? Yes, it is! And it's even better because it's pizza (and salad), not heroin, and you don't have to survive an epic car chase through the streets of Manhattan to get it.
The connection is that Costco sells CPK gift cards, 2 x $50, for $80. That knocks up to 20% off the cost of dining at CPK. Together with the menu having dishes we both genuinely enjoy, the 20% discount has made CPK one of our regular haunts again.
Oh, and why did I mention the CPK is just off Lawrence Expwy? It's because the Costco is on Lawrence, too. In fact it's just 1/2 mile from the restaurant. One evening a few weeks ago we drove to Costco, bought 4 of these gift cards (two packs of two), and promptly drove straight over to CPK to use one for our dinner. 🤣
So now not only is dining at CPK part of our regular rotation, but so is buying their gift cards when we shop at Costco.
A few years ago a new CPK opened up just off Lawrence Expressway, a few miles away from our home. For a while we never went because, again, pizza wasn't an "us" thing. But then I got Hawk to humor me once or twice when I had a jones for it. She grinned and bore it through eating pizza a few times. By the third time or so she decided, "Screw their pizza, I'm getting a salad"... and a wonderful thing happened. She found their salads are really good!That put CPK back into the mix. Now it's a sit-down restaurant not too far from home that we can both agree upon because there are things on the menu we both definitely like. But what really got it into part of our regular rotation was the Costco connection.
The Costco connection? Is that like The French Connection? Yes, it is! And it's even better because it's pizza (and salad), not heroin, and you don't have to survive an epic car chase through the streets of Manhattan to get it.The connection is that Costco sells CPK gift cards, 2 x $50, for $80. That knocks up to 20% off the cost of dining at CPK. Together with the menu having dishes we both genuinely enjoy, the 20% discount has made CPK one of our regular haunts again.
Oh, and why did I mention the CPK is just off Lawrence Expwy? It's because the Costco is on Lawrence, too. In fact it's just 1/2 mile from the restaurant. One evening a few weeks ago we drove to Costco, bought 4 of these gift cards (two packs of two), and promptly drove straight over to CPK to use one for our dinner. 🤣
So now not only is dining at CPK part of our regular rotation, but so is buying their gift cards when we shop at Costco.
