COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 30, 2025--
California Pizza Kitchen (CPK), the iconic restaurant brand that revolutionized pizza, is pulling out all the stops for National Pizza Month with new pizzas and plenty of perks available to guests all month long. Starting today, fans can try CPK’s two limited-time, craveable pizzas – the new Cacio e Pepe Pizza and returning fan-favorite Habanero Carnitas Pizza. CPK is also bringing back its frightfully fun CPKids Jack-O-Lantern Pizza for just $5. Additionally, guests can earn a $5 return visit coupon with any entrée pizza purchase in October.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250930834360/en/
CPK’s featured pizzas this month continue the brand’s legacy of creativity and bold, unexpected flavors, including:
"While every pizza brand celebrates this month, National Pizza Month is our time to shine," said Chef Paul Pszybylski, VP of Culinary Innovation at CPK. "We lead the way with pizza flavor, quality, and creativity – where every ingredient is chosen with intention and brought together to create a memorable and craveable experience for our guests.”
As part of CPK’s National Pizza Month celebration, guests who purchase any pizza between September 30 and October 31 will receive a $5 coupon for their next visit with a minimum $20 purchase, redeemable October 16 – November 15 *. Available for dine-in or takeout, this offer invites guests to continue exploring the bold, imaginative flavors that make CPK unique.
For additional value, CPK is continuing its popular $10 Pizza Days offer on Mondays and Tuesdays throughout October. Featuring fan-favorite pizzas, The Original BBQ Chicken, Pepperoni, Traditional Cheese, and Mushroom Pepperoni Sausage – each for only $10. Available for dine-in or takeout (including Take & Bake style), with a $20 minimum purchase. Mention “$10 Pizza Days” to your server, or use promo code CPKPizza online or in the CPK app.
*$5 coupon not available in Hawaii. Not redeemable on Veterans Day or in combination with the $10 Pizza Day discount, CPKids Jack-O-Lantern Pizzas, and Catering 10 Pizzas for $100.
For more information, visit www.cpk.com and follow @ cpk on Instagram, @ calpizzakitchen on TikTok or @ calpizzakitchen on X.
About California Pizza Kitchen
Founded in 1985, California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) revolutionized casual dining with its first restaurant in Beverly Hills, California, introducing the world to innovative, California-inspired pizza at scale. Now celebrating its 40th anniversary year, CPK is a beloved global brand, serving creative California cuisine in restaurants spanning 25 U.S. states along with nine countries and U.S. territories. Additionally, the CPK brand has been a premium leader in the U.S. frozen pizza grocery aisle for more than 25 years while more recently expanding to branded salad dressings and noodle sauces. Today, CPK continues to innovate and expand in casual dining, retail products, and non-traditional food service channels, providing more access to its fresh, imaginative twist on familiar foods that consumers continue to crave.
CPK's limited-time Cacio e Pepe Pizza and Habanero Carnitas Pizza
BERLIN (AP) — Standing on an open truck making its way through Berlin, Anahita Safarnejad turned to the crowd of Iranian protesters marching behind her and took the microphone.
“No more dictatorship in Iran, the mullahs must go!” she shouted. Hundreds of voices echoed her slogan with the same sense of urgency and desperation.
Across Europe, thousands of exiled Iranians have taken to the streets to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic which has cracked down on protests in their homeland, reportedly killing thousands of people.
Women have taken a prominent role in organizing the protests abroad, raising their voices against the theocratic government that discriminates against them.
But beyond the anger, there’s also a sense of fear and paralysis. Iran's government has been shutting down the internet and limiting phone calls for days, making it nearly impossible for Iranians in the diaspora to find out if their families back home are safe.
Safarnejad, 34, fled Iran seven years ago. She came to Berlin to study theater but now works in a bar when she's not attending one of the almost-daily protests in the German capital.
Since the demonstrations broke out in Iran in late December, Safarnejad said she's been living in two different realities that are almost impossible to combine. The easygoing hipster life of her new hometown is a jarring contrast to the bloody protests in Iran that she's been following every minute she doesn't have to work, glued to her phone for the latest updates.
While she was initially almost euphoric that the current uprising would finally bring freedom to Iran and she'd be able to go back home, her sense of hope has turned into horror.
Safarnejad hasn't spoken to her brother, also a protester, since communications with Iran were cut off. She's been scouring video on social media showing piles of dead bodies to see if he's among the corpses.
“I'm desperate and don't know how to keep going anymore,” she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she spoke to The Associated Press during Wednesday's Berlin protest.
“I can’t really switch off. I can’t really stop reading the news either," she added, her voice breaking. “Because I’m waiting all the time for the internet to be available so I can get some answers from my family.”
The young woman's horror is felt by many of the more than 300,000 Iranians living in Germany — one of the biggest exile communities in Europe and similar in numbers to France and Britain. Many of them still have family ties to their homeland, even if they left decades ago.
Mehregan Maroufi's Persian cafe and bookstore in Berlin has become a place of solace for Iranians to share their grief without many words — because they know they are all living through the same nightmare.
Maroufi, the daughter of the late Iranian author Abbas Maroufi, welcomes Iranians and everyone else at the Hedayat Cafe, where she serves Persian tea with sweets such as chocolate cake topped with barberries. She lends an ear to anyone who has to get worries off their chest.
“For some, the emotions are still too high and too strong, so to speak, and it’s impossible to talk," the 44-year-old says, adding that she, too, had to force herself to open the cafe on some mornings because the violent images coming out of Iran sucked away all her energy.
“But at least you can find compatriots here. You can talk to a little, and that helps,” she said.
She says she's been listening to and learning from the convictions her fellow Iranians express when they talk about their dreams of an Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that — due to the uprising — now seems closer that ever before.
While most in the diaspora agree that the theocracy has to be toppled, ideas of what a new Iran should look like differ widely.
Adeleh Tavakoli, 62, joined a demonstration outside Britain’s Parliament in London earlier this week. She hasn't been back to Iran in 17 years but has spent decades protesting from afar against the Islamic Republic.
But with the latest wave of protests, she hopes that the Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, will return to power. If he does, she said, she has her bag packed and is ready to get on the first flight.
“For 47 years, our country has been captured by a terrorist regime,” she said. “We’ve been the voice of Iran. All we want is our freedom and to get rid of this horrible dictatorship.”
For Maral Salmassi, who came to Germany as a child in the 1980s, history explains the calls by exiled Iranians for Pahlavi to lead the country.
“As an Iranian, as someone who comes from this culture and knows its culture and history, I can only say that we have had kings and queens for thousands of years. It is our culture," said Salmassi. She is the chairwoman and founder of the Zera Institute think tank in Berlin, which researches democracy, radicalization and extremism.
She added that Iranians make up a multi-ethnic country and "to bring them all together again, we need a constitutional monarchy that symbolically and traditionally represents our identity and reunites everyone ... and then a democratic, federal parliament where everyone is represented equally.”
However, not everyone is convinced by Pahlavi. Maryam Nejatipur, 32, who also joined the protest in Berlin, thinks her country should avoid a cult of personality.
“We don’t need something like Khamenei again. We don’t need one person,” to lead us, she said, as she burnt a portrait of the Ayatollah and used the flames to light a cigarette — an act that's become a symbol of Iranian resistance.
Safarnejad, who led the recent Berlin protest, agrees.
“I don’t belong to the left, I’m not a liberal, I’m not a monarchist,” she stressed. “I’ve been there for women’s rights, I’m for human rights, I’m for freedom.”
Fanny Brodersen and Ebrahim Noroozi, in Berlin, and Brian Melley in London contributed reporting.
Protester Adeleh Tavakoli, left, demonstrates outside the House of Parliament, in London, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
People take part in a rally in support of anti-government protests in Iran, Berlin Germany, Wednesday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Mehregan Maroufi poses for a photo before an interview with the Associated Press in her cafe in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Maryam Nejatipur 32, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Iranian Anahita Safarnejad, 34, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
