By Emma Koehn
Fine-dining meal-delivery business Providoor has collapsed and will enter liquidation on Friday, with founder Shane Delia saying he wished the business was able to weather challenging economic times in the hospitality sector.
In a note on the company’s website on Friday, Delia, who founded Providoor during Melbourne’s first pandemic lockdowns in 2020, told consumers the group had stopped accepting orders immediately.
Restaurateur Shane Delia launched Providoor during pandemic lockdowns. Credit: Arsineh Houspian
“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the closure of Providoor, a business born out of the very worst days the hospitality industry has ever seen,” he said.
“Later today, Providoor will be formally placed into liquidation.”
The shock closure of the business comes just days after the company was emailing customers to promote special dining offers for Mother’s Day.
“50 per cent of menus sold out the week before Mother’s Day [in] 2022, don’t miss out,” the company told customers on Tuesday as it promoted gourmet hampers from Entrecote, The Westin and cocktail bar The Ugly Duckling.
Delia, whose restaurant portfolio includes his flagship Middle Eastern restaurant Maha, launched Providoor in 2020 when he recruited a group of well-known eateries to help deliver high-quality restaurant meals to diners when COVID-19 restrictions prevented them from going to restaurants.
Customers were able to order meal kits from venues such as Supernormal and Tipo 00 that were required minimal at-home preparation to be completed.
Providoor delivered across Melbourne and Sydney and expanded to Brisbane at the start of 2022. At its height the business was connecting diners to set menus and a la carte ordering at dozens of much-loved eateries including Supernormal, Sake, Rockpool, Lucy Liu, Three Blue Ducks, Spice Temple and Rumi.
In 2021, Providoor poached eBay Australia’s managing director Tim MacKinnon to join the company as chief executive. At the time, MacKinnon and Delia spoke about the potential to scale Providoor across the globe.
Delia said that even when lockdowns lifted, the service was still popular.
“When people kept using Providoor after social restrictions were lifted, it showed us that it was a really good idea,” he said in the statement on the company’s website.
However, he noted the entire food industry was facing tough economic conditions.
“I just wish it [the company] 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,” he said.
“While today is a very sad day, I am proud of Providoor and what it has achieved. We served more than one million meals and built something that made a difference during some very dark days.”
Providoor is not the only food business born during the COVID era which has been forced to shutter.
Rapid grocery delivery business Milkrun closed this month, making hundreds of staff across Sydney and Melbourne redundant.
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