Pope Joan cafe closes in CBD, owing $900k to creditors after trade falls by 80 per cent

Collins Street cafe Pope Joan closed this week after trying to find a buyer and going through business restructuring to pay creditors owed more than $900,000.

Since the onset of the pandemic and changed office working conditions, trade at the cafe, which opened in 2019, has fallen by nearly 80 per cent.

“The city is proving to be such a tremendous challenge,” says co-owner David Mackintosh. “Daytime cafe business feels permanently different in the city now.”

Pope Joan’s largest debt was to the Australian Tax Office for nearly $600,000 of unpaid taxes. Mackintosh and his partners have paid staff outstanding superannuation from their own funds.

The restructuring will return nearly 14 cents on the dollar to creditors, compared with 1 cent or less had the business gone into liquidation, according to Mackintosh.

The business has been on the market since March. Mackintosh says an interested buyer earlier this year could not reach a lease agreement with the landlord, so that sale fell through, although negotiations are under way with another buyer.

However, Mackintosh remains confident about the future of the Pope Joan brand, with a plan to open at the Qantas domestic terminal at Melbourne Airport in late September.

Longer term, he hopes to find a suburban location for the cafe, taking it closer to its origins as a neighbourhood spot, complete with vegie garden. Chef Matt Wilkinson and partners originally opened in Brunswick East in 2010.

A 2018 closure to make way for apartments in rapidly gentrifying Brunswick East led to the current iteration, nestled in the forecourt of the Sofitel Melbourne on Collins at the top end of town.

Wilkinson later departed, but some of his Pope Joan signatures, including Reuben sandwiches, boiled eggs with soldiers and bacon bits, and rice pudding, lived on.