Hell Pizza Brand Guidelines: The Wellington Pizza Chain Built on a Devilish Name

A pizza shop beside a Wellington university.

Hell Pizza began in Wellington in 1996. English Wikipedia says founder Callum Davies opened it as a pizza shop in Kelburn, next to Victoria University of Wellington, and was joined in 1999 by Stu McMullin and Warren Powell; the second store opened in Hataitai, another Wellington suburb. The New Zealand Herald, reporting in October 2023, also gives Wellington and 1996 as the chain’s starting point.

The devilish name came with a personality to match. English Wikipedia says Davies took his cue from the playful on-air style of The Fish, a radio station in Taupō, to give his shop more character. In 2009 Powell and McMullin told the Herald that Hell had never been meant as a pizza shop alone: in its early days it delivered everything from curries to milkshakes.

The business spread across New Zealand as a franchise. By 2009 it had 61 New Zealand stores, English Wikipedia says, and franchises have operated at various times in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, South Korea, India and Queensland, in Australia. In 2009, English Wikipedia says, it had six stores in Brisbane and was trialling stores in Fulham, in London, and in Dublin. By 2012 it had 65 stores in New Zealand and three in South Korea, two Queensland stores remained after eight others had closed, and outlets in London, Dublin, Vancouver and a pizza bar in New Delhi were still trading. By 2016 all 66 of its outlets were in New Zealand. On its own website the company describes HELL, which it writes in capitals, as an owner-operated business, and says it looks for franchisees who will work in their stores themselves.

Seven sins on the menu.

The theme runs through the menu. Hell’s standard range has seven pizzas named after the seven deadly sins, English Wikipedia says, and the names carry over into newer products: the company’s website promotes a Lust Deluxe pizza. The joke reaches the rest of the site too. Its blog is called Wickedpedia, its franchise page invites applicants to “come to the dark side,” and its gift and catering pages talk of feeding a “horde” rather than a crowd.

Advertising has been a large part of the brand’s reputation. The New Zealand Herald wrote in May 2009 that the chain had become famous for “shock marketing tactics,” and that a 2006 promotional mailout for its Lust pizza had run foul of the Advertising Standards Authority.

That reputation has outlasted the ownership changes. In February 2023 SmartCompany described Hell as a chain that had built its name on bold advertising campaigns, free-range ingredients and a large menu of vegetarian and vegan options, and it noted the brand’s online ranking of ways to reheat a pizza, which set clothes dryers and heated blankets against conventional ovens. The chain’s then chief executive told the publication that Hell was “not a mainstream offering” and made no apologies for it.

Australian and New Zealand food chains.

Australian and New Zealand food chains usually present themselves through a small set of repeated parts: a shopfront and sign that can be read from across a car park, a menu built around a few named products, and a story about the suburb where the first shop opened. Roast and charcoal chicken, burgers, pies, muffins, juice, pizza and patisserie each have their own version of that formula, but the structure is shared.

Many of these brands are franchised, and their own pages say so plainly. A typical corporate site explains that each restaurant or café is run by a local franchisee, lists stores by suburb and state, and keeps a separate page for prospective franchise partners. Store formats are named rather than described: drive-thru, shopping centre, strip store, express counter. Store counts appear in trade press with a date attached, and they move as shops open and close.

Ownership is often layered. Several chains sit inside larger groups or private equity portfolios, so one parent may hold more than one brand in the same category; Craveable Brands, for example, owns Red Rooster, Oporto and Chicken Treat. Founders tend to stay in the brand story long after a sale, and company pages keep the founding year, the first shop and the first signature product in view.

Expansion abroad is a recurring chapter, from New Zealand to Asia, the Middle East, Britain and the United States, and the record is uneven, with some markets opened and later left. For designers, these brands are useful studies in how a local takeaway turns its name, colours and a handful of signature items into a system that franchisees can repeat from one suburb to the next.

Sold in 2006, bought back in 2009.

Hell has changed hands once and come back. In 2006 the three founders sold the New Zealand business to Tasman Pacific Foods, then the New Zealand master franchisee for Burger King, the New Zealand Herald reported. In May 2009 the paper reported that Powell, Davies and McMullin had bought the 61-store New Zealand franchise back. The Herald wrote that Tasman Pacific’s years with Hell had included a recession, a revolt by franchisees over the cost of ingredients and a cut in prices, and that the sale let Tasman Pacific focus on its Burger King outlets, which then numbered 71. One Auckland franchisee told the paper that under the previous owner it had felt as if everyone had gone back to being employees of a large corporation.

Ben Cumming led Hell as general manager and then chief executive for 11 years. In October 2023 the Herald reported that he would step down at the end of that year, and quoted him thanking founder Callum Davies for having taken a chance on him as a teenager and later handing him the role. As of November 2022 the chain had 77 outlets in New Zealand, English Wikipedia says: 61 in the North Island, 28 of them in Auckland, and 16 in the South Island.

Australia has been a recurring market. SmartCompany reported in February 2023 that Hell had opened a venue in Newmarket, Brisbane, and noted that the brand had counted five restaurants in Brisbane in 2015; at the time of that report it also had 77 venues in New Zealand.

For a design guide, Hell Pizza shows how one idea in a name can carry through a menu, a website and a franchise pitch for three decades. Compare Red Rooster, an Australian chain that once traded in New Zealand too, and Domino’s. For this guide we use ember red, char black and bone with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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