The Plenty Community Kitchen: Food, Skills & Community in Braybrook

When we first opened Campground Kitchen, our dream was always about more than serving great food.

Don't get us wrong, we love handmade pasta, woodfired pizza and seeing a busy restaurant full of happy customers! But from the beginning, we also imagined this place becoming part of our community. Somewhere people could gather, learn and feel like they belonged.

This year, that idea quietly became reality.

Welcome to The Plenty Community Kitchen

The Plenty Community Kitchen is an eight-week hospitality program held inside our working restaurant. We’ve teamed up with Duke Street Community House to trial our Pilot program over two terms.

Rather than learning in a classroom, participants step behind the scenes into a real commercial kitchen, working alongside our chefs and front-of-house team to experience what hospitality is really like.

Throughout the program, participants learn practical skills including food preparation, basic cooking, pizza making, desserts, food safety, customer service, setting up for service, ordering, stock control and understanding how a restaurant operates day to day.

But while the cooking is important, it's not really what The Plenty Community Kitchen is about.

It's about confidence, connection, and it's about giving people an opportunity they may never have had before.

Learning Together

Our first pilot groups have included people from migrant and ESL backgrounds, disability support organisations and community members looking to build confidence in a supportive environment.

For many participants, it's their first experience inside a commercial kitchen.

For others, it's simply a chance to meet new people, learn practical life skills and discover abilities they didn't know they had. Watching confidence grow over the course of the program has been one of the most rewarding parts of the journey.

Hospitality With Heart

Restaurants are busy places.

There are orders flying in, timers going off, pizzas coming out of the oven and hundreds of small decisions being made every service.

But behind all of that is something much simpler. Hospitality is about looking after people.

That's exactly what we hope participants experience through The Plenty Community Kitchen.

Learning new skills is important, but so is being welcomed into a team, sharing a meal together and feeling like you're part of something.

Looking Ahead

The Plenty Community Kitchen is still very much a pilot program.

We're learning as we go, listening to feedback and discovering what works best for our participants and our restaurant.

Over time, we'd love to see the program continue to grow. Our hope is to create pathways into employment, provide practical hospitality experience and eventually have participants working alongside our team to help prepare meals for people in our community experiencing food insecurity.

Because we believe a restaurant can be more than somewhere to eat. It can be somewhere that creates opportunity.

HQ UPDATE

So a quick update on Happy Camper H.Q - our community kitchen and event space..: 

More than a year ago we took over the warehouse next door to Campground Kitchen, with dreams of creating a community hub, event space and prep kitchen for our Happy Camper Pizza trucks. Simple, right?

Wrong.

First it took nearly a year to convince Council that a former mechanic's workshop could become something other than a mechanic's workshop.

Then we discovered that changing the use of a building means a 60-year-old shed suddenly has to behave like a modern building. And then there's the power…

Apparently we can build giant AI Data centres, but trying to get enough power to run an air conditioner in Braybrook is where the system draws the line.

Honestly, it's doing our heads in a bit.

So while we wait for reports about reports and permits for permits, we decided to stop taking ourselves so seriously. We graffitied the walls. Collected free table tennis tables off Facebook Marketplace. And lit the firepit.

Remi cooked slow-cooked meat on the spit and made the team kebabs. There were marshmallows, questionable table tennis skills and T-shirts for the artistic types to spray on. The team got right into it - not sure if their enjoyment writing profanities is a message to us, Council or the power company. Anyway. Happy Camper HQ isn't ready yet.

But maybe that's okay. If there's one thing we've learnt over the years, it's that some of our favourite memories have happened while Plan A was falling apart.

In the meantime, the firepit works, the spit kind-of works and the table tennis tables are only mildly broken.

So I guess we're off to a pretty good start.

happy camper hq SNEAK PEAK

We’ve been keeping a little secret in Braybrook. After years of slinging wood-fired pizza from our vintage trucks, selling takeaway pizza from our Braybrook warehouse and then welcoming guests to Happy Camper Pizza’s base camp, Campground Kitchen & Bar, we’re building something bigger - Happy Camper HQ, opening in 2026.

This new home is more than just a kitchen. It’s a place where all the pieces of Happy Camper Catering come together:

• Commercial Kitchen & Catering Hub – a purpose-built space to power more trucks, more events, and even more of the food you love.

• Event Space – designed for birthdays, weddings and celebrations of every kind.

• Slow Camp Community Hub – a warm, flexible venue for cooking classes, art workshops and long, shared dinners.

Designer Petrina Turner, who worked with us on our vintage trucks and the Campground fit-out, has been shaping the vision with us for over a year. Together we’re building a space that reflects everything Happy Camper stands for: community, creativity and celebration.

We’ll be sharing progress updates and plenty of behind-the-scenes details as the build unfolds.

Here’s to a new chapter and more spaces that bring people together.

happy camper wins wedding award abia

Proud moment alert! Happy Camper Catering has just been named Runner-Up in the Australian Bridal Industry Awards for Independent Wedding Caterers 2025!

This isn’t just about pizza (though we do love our pizza - it’s about every canapé crafted, every gelato scoop shared, and every “wow” from a wedding crowd.

To our beautiful brides + grooms: thank you for nominating us and letting us be part of your story. To our amazing team: you’re the heart of it all, from rolling dough at sunrise to serving slices under the stars.

Second place in a line-up that includes some of the country’s best caterers and venues? We’ll happily take that with a side of prosecco.

Here’s to more love, more celebrations, and more happiness, one slice at a time.

HAPPY CAMPER HQ build is underway!

Happy Camper HQ is officially on the way! ⁠

⁠Next door to Campground Kitchen in Braybrook, Happy Camper HQ will be our new, larger commercial kitchen and full event space - perfect for weddings, birthdays, corporate gatherings and every celebration in between.⁠⁠

It will also house Slow Camp, a community hub for cooking classes, art workshops and unplugged dinners so we can keep bringing people together around food and creativity.⁠

Getting here hasn’t been easy - think planning hurdles with Maribyrnong Council and the long road from rebuilding after the fire to creating Campground Kitchen - but giving Happy Camper its own event space has always been the dream.⁠

We can’t wait to share more as we get closer to opening in 2026.⁠

Thanks for being part of the journey, this has been 12 years in the making and the next chapter is for all of you. 💛⁠

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