Telepizza Brand Guidelines: The 1987 Madrid Delivery Chain That Began as Pizza Phone

A neighbourhood shop in northern Madrid.

Telepizza began in 1987 as a small neighbourhood business in Madrid’s Barrio del Pilar, under the name Pizza Phone, the newspaper ABC reported in April 2016. Its founder, Leopoldo Fernández Pujals, a Cuban-born businessman, told the magazine XLSemanal, in an interview ABC quoted, that he saw home pizza delivery as a viable business because it did not yet exist in Spain. Spanish Wikipedia adds that he opened the first shop with a group of partners from Madrid and Vigo.

ABC described how the business started: the founder kneaded dough at night while keeping his day job at a multinational company, and tested recipes on young basketball players coming off a nearby court until they agreed on one. “One Wednesday they all agreed which was the right one, and on the Friday we opened the pizzeria,” he said, in ABC’s account. The formula was then taken to other cities and abroad through franchising, the newspaper reported.

Growth came quickly. In 1992–93 the company opened its first factory and began expanding abroad, in Poland, Portugal and Chile, according to ABC; by 1995 it counted 248 shops, 44 of them outside Spain. The central supply model has stayed part of the business: Spanish Wikipedia says that production is concentrated at a single plant at Daganzo de Arriba, near Madrid, where dough balls are made centrally and then sent out to the restaurants.

Telepizza first listed its shares on the Spanish stock market in 1996, when it counted 287 outlets, ABC reported; English Wikipedia gives the date of the listing as 13 November 1996.

Two listings and a run of owners.

The founder did not stay long after the listing. ABC dates the change to 1998, when a new group of shareholders, the Ballvé family, came in and the founder left; English and Spanish Wikipedia describe him selling his remaining stake in 1999, with control passing to Pedro Ballvé, of the meat group Campofrío, and José Carlos Olcese. ABC reported that the franchise management system was modernised around the turn of the century.

Ownership then passed between investors. In 2006 the private-equity fund Permira and the Ballvé family made the bid that took Telepizza off the stock market, the trade publication Alimarket reported. By 2014, according to ABC, Permira and the Ballvé family held 51 per cent and the investment firm KKR 36 per cent. In April 2016 Telepizza returned to the Madrid stock exchange, almost ten years after it had left, ABC reported.

At that point the chain operated in 15 countries through a network of 1,311 shops: 461 run by the company and 850 franchised or master-franchised, according to ABC. The same article listed its expansion over the previous decade: Dubai in 2008, the purchase of the Colombian pizza chain Jeno’s in 2010, Peru in 2011, Ecuador in 2012, Panama and Russia in 2013, Bolivia and Angola in 2015 and Saudi Arabia in 2016.

The 2006 partners did not stay after the return to the market. Alimarket reported in May 2017 that Foodco Finance, the Luxembourg company through which Permira and the Ballvé family held their shares, had sold its remaining stake of about 11 per cent to qualified investors, leaving neither in the capital; KKR, with about 20 per cent, became the main shareholder.

Shopfronts, menus and group ownership.

Europe’s restaurant chains grew up close to home and then went abroad. The pasta, grill, buffet, pizza, tapas and burger brands in this round come from Germany, France, Spain, Finland and Sweden, and most of them present themselves first through the room: the shopfront, the sign over the door, the counter and the way a guest orders. Vapiano built its look from a long service counter, wooden tables, basket lamps and pots of herbs, and Wienerwald was known for decades for rustic dining rooms built around roast chicken.

Menus are the second layer of identity. The companies name their signature dishes on their own websites, from fresh pasta shapes to grilled chicken, pizza, small sandwiches and burgers, and they change them when they relaunch: Vapiano’s German restaurants swapped pizza for pinsa in 2021, and the new Wienerwald added bowls and vegetarian dishes after its return.

Most of these brands grow through franchising, and their corporate pages explain founders, owners and franchise networks in their own words. Restaurant and country counts change quickly, so this guide gives each one with the date and source it comes from, and separates what independent press reports from what a company says about itself.

Ownership changes are part of the story. Several chains in this group have been sold between families, investors and larger restaurant groups, and some have gone through insolvency: Wienerwald in 1982 and again in the 2000s, Vapiano in 2020. Each guide sets out those events plainly, with dates and outcomes, and says what trades under the name today.

Food Delivery Brands and “la masa”.

The company that runs Telepizza now trades as Food Delivery Brands. In February 2024 Forbes España described it as the restaurant group that operates Telepizza and Pizza Hut in Spain, and reported on its change of ownership. A debt restructuring agreement was signed in May 2023 and the restructuring plan was approved by a Madrid court later that year. Under it, a large part of the group’s debt was converted into shares, the existing shareholders were fully diluted, and the holders of its senior debt — among them Oak Hill Advisors, Blantyre Capital, H.I.G. Capital, Fortress Investment Group and TREO — took control, with the new board elected at an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting in February 2024, Forbes España reported.

The brand’s advertising has long turned on its dough. In March 2023 the trade site Reason Why reported a new campaign, “Viva la masa, ahí está el secreto” (“Long live the dough, that’s where the secret is”), which reworked Telepizza’s historic line “El secreto está en la masa” — “the secret is in the dough.” The Spanish word masa means both dough and the masses, and the campaign used it to put customers at the centre. The campaign was led by the creative agency Sioux & Cyranos, which had won the account from DDB at the end of 2022, and was produced by Little Spain; the nearly two-minute film was set at night in Madrid’s Royal Palace, with the actors Yolanda Ramos and Farid Bechara as two cleaners who stop for a Telepizza.

The “Viva la Masa” platform has continued. In March 2025 El Periódico de la Publicidad reported a further campaign, “Un País muy de Telepizza”, created by the agency Manifiesto, which introduced a new Barbacoas range of pizzas and again cast customers as the main characters, from friends watching football to a family that orders every Thursday. The campaign also referred to MiTelepi, the brand’s loyalty points programme.

For a design guide, Telepizza shows how a delivery brand can build its identity around one ingredient and one line: the dough, and the claim that the secret is in it, reworked across four decades of advertising. Compare Domino’s, another delivery-led pizza chain, and 100 Montaditos, a Spanish chain. For this guide we use tomato red, dough cream and oven black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Telepizza’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.