Go to Hell (Pizza)

Last week's story about the Heart Attach Grill has me more than usually interested in niche fast food concepts so I was delighted to come across the Kiwi pizza franchise Hell Pizza which has made the leap across the Tasman to Australia.

Featuring menu items named after the seven deadly sins; Mordor (pepperoni, bacon and chicken) and Brimstone (cajun chicken, salsa and sour cream) the chain has worked the satanic angle into all it's marketing even boasting 13 HELL (13 4355) for deliveries.

Hell Pizza is owned in Australia by Tartarus (place in the underworld even lower than Hades) and looks like it has chosen Queensland as the launch pad for it's Australian debut with 4 stores in operation around Brisbane.

Living up to it's edgy name, Hell Pizza are the bad boys of the pizza industry having been involved in controversial marketing campaigns in NZ such as

• a condom letterbox campaign for its "Lust" pizza;
• references to Hitler on a billboard;
• objectionable content in its Hell-o magazine and
• buying 24-year-old Walter Scott's soul for $NZ5001 after he advertised it on the auction website TradeMe.

Also drawing the ire back in NZ was an "insensitive" article in it's magazine about the death of Steve Irwin which should go down like a lead gargoyle in Queensland!

It seems you can't expect smooth sailing all the time, even in Hell.

In late 2006 Hell NZ was sold to Tasman Pacific Foods (TPF), the owners of the Burger King Franchise, for about $NZ15 million ($A12.56 million) and the original owners kept the international rights.

The sale also led to a major falling out with its advertising agency, Cinderella owned by Matt Blomfield, who said he had no confidence in the new conservative marketing and wanted to sell the 10 franchises he owns personally.

Falling back on the established tricks of his trade, Mr Blomfield recently placed one of his stores, valued at $830,000, on Trade Me, with a reserve of just $1.

Personally I can see Matt's point, with this leatest offering from new agency Colenso BBDO not having quite the edge of the earlier campaigns.

Still business is booming for the original founders of Hell, Callum Davies and Stuart McMullin, who are finalising master franchise agreements in Ireland, Canada and the UK to add to their evil empire.