If Hell Pizza is hurting, the corner takeaway is already gone

Hell Pizza should be one of the hospitality businesses best placed to ride out a downturn. It has scale, a national brand, three decades of supplier relationships and a loyal customer base. Yet chief executive Josh Drake says the past year has been “the most difficult period in the 30 years of Hell’s existence”.

That is not a birthday soundbite. It is a reading from the shop floor, and every cafe, takeaway and restaurant owner should take it seriously. If a chain with Hell’s advantages is struggling to hold order frequency, operators running one site on thin credit have almost no margin for error.

Fatigue, not collapse

Drake, who took the top job in 2024, describes something slower and more corrosive than a sudden crash. Loyal customers are still ordering, just less often. “I think it’s just been so many years for consumers now that we’re all starting to get pretty fatigued,” he told the Herald. Wellington and its surrounds have been the weakest territory, tracking closely with consumer confidence, and Auckland has also been soft. The South Island held up for longer but began slipping in 2026, despite stronger dairy payouts and recovering visitor numbers.

That last point matters. Better farm incomes and more tourists were supposed to be the regional cushion. If they are not translating into Friday-night pizza orders, the household squeeze runs deeper than the headline indicators suggest.

This is also not a message Drake has suddenly discovered for the anniversary. Back in June he was already describing conditions as the most challenging in the company’s 30-year history, in an NBR piece that likened trading for local takeaway operators to “walking through treacle”. Five months on, the line has not changed.

Margin is where the pain lands

The most useful detail for business owners is how Hell has coped. Drake credits the supply chain with absorbing cost increases so menu prices could stay broadly stable despite food inflation. In plain terms, the business and its suppliers have eaten the margin rather than passing it to tired customers.

That is a sensible call for a brand fighting for order frequency. It is also a call most independents cannot make. A single-site operator does not have the purchasing volume to negotiate cost-sharing with suppliers. They either raise prices into a fatigued market or watch their margin disappear.

The store count hints at the pressure too. In July 2025, Hell opened its 80th store in Karori, taking the network to 79 in New Zealand plus one in Queensland. Today it sits at 78 here and one in Brisbane. That is not a retreat, but it is a brand that has stopped growing during its hardest stretch.

The numbers behind the shop floor

The sector data confirms Hell is not an outlier. A Herald analysis in September found 422 hospitality companies entered liquidation in the previous 12 months, up from 297 a year earlier, an increase of roughly 42%. Hospitality’s liquidation rate was running at 3.3 times the national average for all businesses, and the failures included established operators struggling under debt.

The same analysis flagged the gap between improving forward-looking confidence surveys and the worsening reality of closures. Survey optimism does not pay rent. Hell’s experience sits squarely in that gap.

There is a structural story layered on the cyclical one as well. NBR noted that while local takeaway operators grind through, multinational chains and delivery platforms “continue to fatten up”. Scale, global procurement and aggregator fees all tilt the field towards the biggest players.

Why the survivor still matters

None of this cancels out the achievement. Hell started in 1996 out of a Wellington cafe and remains locally owned and independent in a category dominated by international chains, having employed tens of thousands of Kiwis along the way. Founder Callum Davies says the challenge “isn’t trying to keep HELL young, it’s making sure we never start acting our age”. The brand is marking 30 with a typically cheeky “anti-ageing” campaign.

It has also tried something genuinely useful. Its 2025 ownership pathway let long-serving staff run a store for six months before deciding on equity, with an existing franchisee funding the initial investment. Former delivery driver Matt Searle became a co-owner at 31 under that model, according to The Post. Putting skin in the game for proven staff is a smarter growth model than hunting for outside franchisees with cash but no operating experience.

What happens next

The lesson for hospitality owners is blunt. Price rises are a hard sell to worn-out customers, so protecting margin now depends on supplier terms, tight cost control and keeping the right people. Hell has those levers and still calls this its worst year. Until order frequency recovers, expect the liquidation figures to keep doing the talking for everyone who does not.

Sources

• NZ Herald: Hell Pizza turns 30 as CEO reveals toughest year in franchise’s history (2026-11-07)
• Hospitality Business: Hell of a swap for new CEO Josh Drake (2024-03-13)
• Stats NZ: Tourism statistics
• The Post: Highway to Hell ownership for young business operators (2025-07-12)
• NZ Herald: Liquidations are soaring, even as RBNZ talks about recovery – The Economy of Everything (2026-09-02)
• The Post: Hell hath no fury like a pizza chain turning 30 (2026-10-15)
• Campaign Brief: HELL Pizza marks 30 years with ‘clinically unproven’ anti-ageing launch via Yarn + Inject (2026-10-16)