Shane Delia
Interview #45 - Shane Delia
This week, I had an incredible opportunity to interview Australia's most loved and high-profile Chef/ TV Presenter/ Author and Business Owner, Shane Delia. Shane's experience and work in the hospitality industry seem to extend as long as the table at the World's Longest Lunch! It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview Shane, not only is he so very humble, reliable and down to Earth.
Shane Delia is a household name and best known as Chef and Owner of restaurants Maha and Biggie Smalls, and more recently he is the inventive mind behind his new and inspiring business venture, the food-delivery platform - Providoor. He's embraced our television screens as a presenter, host of his own TV shows Spice Journey and Recipe For Life and broadens his biography as the author of Maha Middle Eastern Home Cooking and Spice Journey: Adventures in Middle Eastern Cooking.
At the age of 14, he was able to embrace his passion for cooking with traditional Maltese foods and was trained relatively young when his parents would task him with cutting the carrots and putting a chicken in the oven after school. With these being Shane’s earliest and fondest memories of cooking with his family, this sparked his passion and began cooking professionally at the age of 16 with a formal apprenticeship of four years at the Gordon Institute in Geelong and then one year at MIT.
When he isn’t behind the lines in the kitchen, the French and Chinese cuisines are his two favourites to eat, and when cooking, the embedded culture of Middle Eastern foods and French foods is where his heart lies.
Early on in Shane’s career while he was still an apprentice, he took part in a long-gone prestigious cooking competition called the Darrell Cox competition. Being as determined as he was, Shane ended upcoming 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 15th over four years. So In the last year which was when he came first, it was a huge pinnacle and had since stood out the most in his career as it gave him a lot of self-belief and understood that with the courage to try hard enough and be resilient, then anything could be achieved.
Do you have a role model or anyone that gives you inspiration?
"A professional role model, I don't think I can take one person. I think I've got a really good engaged network of people. I mean, I only look up to people that I know, I think it’s almost a little bit shallow to look up to people that you don't even know, you sort of know what they would want you to know about what you read or photos you see about them. When you really know somebody then that's somebody you could look up too, so I'm lucky I have a great family structure, but I look up to my father and mother and grandparents, but I also have a really good friendship circle of honest and humbled tradies and really high-end leaders of the industry of all sorts to contribute to my mentors."
Back in 2008, Maha was the very first business Shane ever started and even though it was quite some time ago, it still going strong and feels like it was only yesterday was opening day. Before opening Maha, Shane didn’t know much about running a business, and to this day, there is still so much to learn as the environment around him changes continuously. Every day is always a learning experience, and he knows never to overestimate himself and knows when to take advice and ask for help.
In saying this, there was quite a lot of doubt before starting Maha, especially as a first business. However, as a person, Shane is very risk-averse and doesn’t like to take on un-calculated risks so even though, at every vital stage, everything has been assessed, that doesn’t mean that there was never any doubt that it wouldn’t work out.
As a person, Shane Delia is very humble, reliable and down to Earth which translates into his cooking and his business. While he may categorise his workmates into different animals based on personalities like monkeys and lions, there is the truth behind it and meaning to make sure that the culture he provides is consistent and manageable.
In his business relationships, I was intrigued by Shane's method of categorising his workmates into different animals. He based them on their personalities, such as monkeys and lions. This method helped him identify their key strengths to help him push his business forward.
If Shane were to begin his business journey now, after all these years, it wouldn’t be or look the same, so when he started back in 2008 was the start of who he has become today.
Are there any learning lessons that you have learnt in the hospitality industry that you can share?
"I think its quite prolific in hospitality, but I think it's important that in any business and personal relationship, trust, camaraderie and honesty are really important pillars. Without them, you fall apart, and identifying what your pillars are early on in business and cementing yourself in those is important. I think if you're quite vague and wishy-washy and everybody is your mate, that's great but it's a soft foundation. I think you need to have really honest relationships. Still, also, not everyone has to be the same; the best business relationships and the best workplaces are where you have a whole jungle of animals, not all lions and tigers."
There are many challenges that everyone goes through, especially business owners and those risking a lot to turn their dream into a reality, but it’s more so how you overcome these rather than let it consume you.
Shane has had his fair share of challenges throughout his career and personal life especially, there is a vast difference in worlds which can be quite confronting. As a result, he to grow and adapt because even though he started really young, he was thrown into a professional work environment where it got at times, toxic with a few opposing influences.
In regards to professional challenges, there was always a plethora of lousy business relationships, especially in the sense that the market Shane is in is a highly competitive market with the consistency of new players coming into the scene. Against all these challenges throughout his career, there have been positives with all that has come about this year, which have been challenging times for everyone.
The corona-virus restrictions forced restaurants to switch to takeaway and delivery, and the challenges and the negatives of this pandemic became the positives and the foundation for Shane's new business, Providoor.
Providoor is a restaurant delivery service, providing those around Melbourne the best that Melbourne’s top restaurants have to offer in their own homes. You can experience high-quality food from all of your favourites in the heart of Melbourne, from the main course to exquisite deserts.
It's a huge challenge to manage this new business that is already remarkably valued at 60 to 70 million dollars in a matter of weeks, but it's a challenge that is loved by Shane, considering he's trying to keep people employed.
I asked Shane whether he would ever go back in time and give advice to his younger self. Sometimes when one thinks of going back to give advice, it’s almost saying if we would want to change something.
Shane definitely wouldn’t change anything because even though there have been many mistakes and challenges along the way, and some decisions haven’t been the best, they have also shaped who he is;
“I suppose, the biggest piece of advice I would give is to listen more and talk less.”
What has been the best career decision you have ever made?
“Providoor. It has been the most successful business that I have ever been involved in; it has stretched my capacity and capabilities, which is challenging but exciting. Apart from financially, it has also done a lot of good. Providoor has been providing millions of dollars every week into the hospitality sector in the middle of the global pandemic which keeps people employed and funds the whole supply chain, all the way from the grower to the air conditioning mechanic. So I think the eco-system that is has created has been unbelievable.”
Through more recent years and after the establishment of Maha, Shane had gotten the opportunity to be more prevalent and able to go on various daytime TV shows, like being a presenter for Postcards, Spice Journey and Recipe for Life. At the time, Shane was already on day time TV on shows like Ready Steady Cook and a show called The Circle with Chrissie Swan, so while doing these, being on TV was not for the fame, but more purely that he had just opened Maha and Shane saw the opportunity to get his brand out there through TV.
He was working hard on building those long-lasting business relationships led from one thing to another because he then had production companies asking for him to be a host on certain shows, such as Spice Journey.
Through these opportunities, he had worked so hard to obtain and maintain, so many different doors had opened up with new avenues to further his name and get more of his brand out there.
With the chance to be an ambassador for Mercedes Benz and Melbourne City Football Club to name a few, these don’t just come around every day, mostly just being a restaurant chef. Being given this profile to expand his business and to create Providoor has expanded his opportunities to talk to different people across the world today and adapt to this changing world.
If you could describe yourself in one sentence, what would that be?
“I am unbelievably loyal and I love by one sort of motto, I have never been the best at anything but I have always been the hardest worker.”
“So at night before I put my head down, I know I have done possibly everything that I could have done in that day because then if I fail, it wasn’t because I didn’t try hard enough, it was because I wasn’t good enough and then I can live with that but If I fail because I didn’t try hard enough then that’s on me.”
Thank you all for reading another blog post that I have been able to provide this week. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to learn more about Shane Delia and how he came to be in the position he’s in today. To check all that Shane has to offer and all the restaurants and brands he has developed, click the button below.
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