Celebrity chef’s meal delivery service Providoor collapses

Staff face an uncertain future with celebrity chef-owned Providoor – which offers meals from some of the nation’s most loved eateries – now facing liquidation.

Shane Delia, founder of Providoor which was founded at the start of the pandemic in Melbourne and quickly spread to Sydney and Canberra, has been forced to close its doors and is facing liquidation. Picture: Jay Town

Fine-dining restaurant meal delivery platform Providoor, founded by celebrity chef Shane Delia at the start of Covid-19, has been forced to close its doors and is likely to be plunged into liquidation.

The shock closure leaves dozens of staff out of a job and high-end restaurants across Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra without the popular home delivery service.

Investors and administrators behind the meal delivery business were working overnight to rescue the company – which was cash flow positive and had only recently raised millions of dollars in new funding – but the decision by one backer to retrieve their investment looks to have sunk Providoor and forced it into immediate liquidation.

It is expected Providoor’s 15 employees will be told this morning that the company was closing, despite the best efforts of founder Mr Delia and other high-profile investors in the company such as the co-founder of employment website Seek, Andrew Bassat, and its chief executive, former eBay boss Tim Mackinnon.

It is also unclear what will happen to the huge number of Providoor vouchers customers are holding and if they can be redeemed.

Providoor had quickly established itself as a high-end restaurant meals delivery service in the weeks following the first pandemic lockdowns in Melbourne in 2020 and soon spread to Sydney and Canberra where it sold meals prepared by well-known premium restaurants for people to enjoy at home.

Providoor saw a gap in the market where it could offer meal kits from fine-dining restaurants to people at home and it quickly won over dozens of premium restaurants to its platform.

Top restaurants that used Providoor as their meal delivery service included Mr Delia’s Melbourne eatery Maha where the idea began and other restaurants backed by celebrity chefs including Supernormal, Rockpool, Gwen, Spice Temple, Grossi, Three Blue Ducks, Chiswick, Xopp, The Fold and dozens of other popular establishments.

Providoor was the brainchild of well-known chef Shane Delia who kickstarted the meal delivery business in late-April 2020 in Melbourne as a response to the sudden Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and lockdowns which saw in-house dining banned in restaurants for an extended period.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the closure of Providoor, a business borne out of the very worst days the hospitality industry has ever seen,” Mr Delia said.

“While today is a very sad day, I am proud of Providoor and what it has achieved. When people kept using Providoor after social restrictions were lifted, it showed us that it was a really good idea. I just wish it had been given the opportunity to work through the challenging economic conditions, the same facing so many in the restaurant and hospitality sector right now.

“Sadly the Providoor story comes to an end. I want to acknowledge the team, the advisers and our valued restaurant partners who all worked so hard to make Providoor a success.”

Mr Delia, a chef and restaurateur, came up with the idea two days after the cancellation of the 2020 Melbourne Grand Prix after he was forced to send his restaurant staff home due to the restaurant closures.

The owner of well-known Melbourne restaurant Maha had spied a gap in the market where meal delivery services such as UberEats were servicing fast-food and other basic restaurants but that many consumers were looking for a high-end meal experience from their favourite premium eateries.

Since commencing operations, Providoor has made more than 1.2 million meals deliveries and became a major player in Australia’s meal kit sector with 70 restaurants on its platform delivering tens of thousands of meals a week.

Cashflow positive and eyeing off an expansion into Brisbane and the possibly overseas, in November 2021 Providoor went to the market for a selective capital raise seeking between $3m and $15m to fund international expansion plans.

It is believed Providoor had over $5m in the bank when one of the investors exercised a contractual caveat to claim those funds back and despite drawn out negotiations and attempts to save the business this week and which went late into Thursday night it has been tipped into liquidation.

The well-known high-end dining establishment Rockpool Bar and Grill was a user of the Providoor platform. Picture: Nikki Short

When Mr Delia spoke to The Australian in November 2021 on the appointment of a full-time professional CEO for Providoor, he was upbeat about the huge opportunities for the expansion of the fine-dining meal delivery platform that delivered high quality restaurant meals to people at home.

“We have ambitions to be a global delivery platform and so we need a global player, we want to create a world class team.

“I’m a chef, I’m a restaurateur, I’m a founder of Providoor and my skills set is based on customer experience and relationships.”