Providoor founder holidays in Dubai while creditors owed $6.32 million

A businessman whose gourmet delivery service went bust owing millions of dollars has flaunted his lavish, high-end lifestyle on social media, including red carpet restaurant events and business-class trips to luxury resorts.

Providoor founder Shane Delia announced the company was closing in April, thanking his ‘loyal customers’ – out of pocket to the tune of $4.4million – for their support. 

The business collapsed owing creditors $6.32million, including more than $4million to thousands of customers who possess now-defunct gift vouchers. 

But despite his company’s litany of debts, the celebrity chef, who is the mind behind ‘s wildly successful middle Eastern restaurant chain, Maha, has continued to flaunt his luxurious lifestyle on social media. 

Over the past few weeks, the entrepreneur has been enjoying lavish overseas holidays, throwing extravagant red-carpeted dinner parties, and engaging in intensive personal training sessions. 

Photos recently posted to Instagram showed Mr Delia living it up in notoriously expensive Dubai after flying business class to the United Arab Emirates with his wife, Maha. 

In one picture, the couple could be seen beaming from inside their Emirates cabin as they took off on Friday night. 

Business class flights with the airline from Melbourne to Dubai currently fetch around $12,000-$13,000 return for one person.

Another image taken on Sunday showed Mr Delia leaning back in an arm chair smoking a shisha at five-star resort Atlantis, The Palm, where rooms range from around $576 to a staggering $39,000 per night for its most exclusive suite.

The couple appeared to be there for several days visiting their friend Ali El Bourji, who is the Executive Arabic Chef at the iconic luxury hotel, before leaving the city on Monday night. 

‘Goodbye Dubai, we love you,’ Mr Delia wrote, sharing footage of the city’s sparkling horizon, taken from one of the higher floors of the resort. 

Aside from the jaunt, posts online reveal the restaurateur has also been busy ‘getting his rig back into shape’ through an eight-week program with two personal trainers, spruiking his newly-opened restaurant, and hosting massive events. 

On June 1, the businessman – who is an ambassador for superannuation fund Hostplus and Mercedes Benz – held a party with more than 100 guests to celebrate the 15th birthday of his flagship restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD. 

According to a publicity post online, attendees ‘were treated to a red carpet arrival of fire spinners and live music’ as they arrived at Bond Street to sip cocktails at bar Jayda before going next door for a sit-down dinner at award-winning Maha.  

The $185pp event counted among its guests The Project host Waleed Aly and his wife Dr Susan Carland, comedian Kate Langbroek and her husband Peter Lewis, and Channel Nine TV presenter Lauren Philips. 

Meanwhile, Mr Delia has also been working on his latest venture in his expansion of his restaurant empire after opening a new store in Collingwood in March. 

Promotions for Maha North, the latest addition to Delia Group restaurants – which includes Maha Restaurant, Maha East, Jayda and Melbourne airport eateries Middle Ground and Biggie Smalls – have been plugging dishes and urging diners to book in. 

‘Round up your crew.It’s never too cold for a Sunday sesh. Reserve now at the link in the bio,’ the business page posted three days ago.

Mr Delia’s displays of opulence online have outraged some Providoor customers who have been left hundreds of dollars out of pocket. 

‘How can you go into liquidation, owe people, and then publicly flaunt an expensive overseas trip?,’ one angry $200 gift card holder told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘We are talking about owing $4million in gift cards.’ 

When contacted on Tuesday, a representative of Delia Group said Mr Delia was still overseas but did not answer how long he would be away. 

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Mr Delia for comment. 

Providoor was a raging success throughout the pandemic, quickly establishing itself as a high-end restaurant meals delivery service in the first wave of Covid lockdowns in 2020.

The gourmet food service – which first opened in Melbourne and Sydney before expanding to Brisbane in 2022- offered a lifeline to the struggling hospitality industry by allowing  to sell meal kits to the public. 

Dishes were delivered via cold freight with exclusive Sydney restaurants on the menu included Cirrus, Monopole, Yellow, The Apollo, Cho Cho San, Icebergs Dining Room and Bar, Golden Century, Spice Temple, Rockpool and Cicciabella.

The closure reportedly saw the company’s 15 employees made redundant.  

Announcing his brainchild had been placed into liquidation on April 28, Mr Delia said while it was a sad day, he was ‘proud of Providoor and what it has achieved’. 

‘Providoor meant we could secure and create jobs as well as give people a little bit of restaurant joy during a pretty dismal time,’ he wrote.

‘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.

‘I want to acknowledge the team, the advisers and our valued restaurant partners who all worked so hard to make Providoor a success.And to our loyal customers, thank you so much for your support.’

A few weeks later, Mr Delia claimed the only reasoned the company folded was because an investor pulled their money out after losing confidence in the business. 

‘There was a technical breach – a reporting breach (by Providoor) – that they didn’t give us any chance to fix, and they used that to pull the money.It was an oversight,’ he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in May.

‘I still honestly believe that the business would still be here, it would still be trading and we’d be navigating through whatever rough waters were ahead of us.’

After finding fame as the chef and restaurateur, Mr Delia starred in his own TV shows Spice Journey and Recipe For Life, which first aired in 2013 and 2018, respectively.  

He is also an ambassador for Western Bulldogs Football Club, Melbourne City Football Club and espresso machine maker La Marzocco .