REAL Pizza Pasta Salads

At REAL, food is more than nourishment – it is a way to connect with community, the environment and personal wellbeing.

Located in the Victorian coastal town of Port Campbell, REAL Pizza Pasta Salads is a vibrant hub where community, environmental awareness and sustainable living come together. At the heart of the business is founder Kylie Treble, who shared her motivation for starting REAL:

“As a practicing horticulturalist with a belief in stewarding circular environmental connections, I felt the need to share similar principles in a hospitality context. It was almost a dare with myself, can it be done? And in applying these principles, I then felt it important to share all our empathetic operational processes with our customers, hence our focus on transparency and awareness. I guess that I wanted REAL to be an example of how decisions can be made with a focus on environmental well-being.”

At REAL, food serves as a bridge to community, the environment, and personal wellbeing. By using seasonal, locally sourced ingredients and minimal packaging, REAL encourages diners to make thoughtful choices while learning about sustainable food practices. During the day, workshops and events at The Place of Wonder permaculture garden help visitors develop practical skills and a deeper understanding of sustainable living. In the evenings, guests can create meals that reflect their personal choices and respect for the environment. Together, these experiences highlight REAL’s dedication to connecting people, food, and place in meaningful and impactful ways.

While these initiatives demonstrate a strong dedication to sustainability and community, the team wanted to take their efforts further by understanding how their practices measured up against global sustainability standards. This pursuit of continuous improvement led them to Ecotourism Australia’s Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard.

Kylie Treble, founder of REAL Pizza Pasta Salads and The Place of Wonder, explained her motivation for completing the Scorecard:

“I was curious. I felt that at REAL we are connected in lots of ways to our space but wanted to see if I was missing something that we could apply to further enhance our stewardship of connection.”

The Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard is a pre-certification tool that measures a business’s operations across 50 criteria in four pillars: sustainable management, environmental impacts, socio-economic impacts, and cultural impacts. It provides personalised feedback, identifies strengths and gaps, and prepares businesses for globally recognised certification. For REAL, the Scorecard process offered practical insights and reinforced their commitment to sustainable, community-focused practices. Kylie highlighted the main benefits:

“Awareness. An understanding of additional aspects that could be nurtured to better fulfill our intent to sit lightly and connected in the beautiful environment in which we are located.”

The Scorecard report also uncovered specific areas for development, particularly in employee training:

“[The main helpful insights produced by the report] were primarily in relation to employee training to further understand our land and role with an indigenous lens. It will be an adventure for me to identify appropriate training opportunities and I also look forward to undertaking these.”

Kylie also reflected on the learning process itself:

“The emphasis placed on calculating carbon emissions, and the lack of a calculator suited to our type of hospitality, highlighted the complexity of working within natural systems. It shows we have a long way to go in discovering metrics to measure and then manage this.”

By using the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard, REAL has not only strengthened its environmental and community practices but also reinforced its philosophy of good ancestry – leaving a positive legacy for future generations.

Click here to learn more about REAL Pizza Pasta Salads’ sustainable efforts: https://www.realpizzapastasalads.com.au/actions-belonging/

REAL Pizza Pasta Salads completed their Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard on 4 November 2025 and is a snapshot of their current sustainability practices. The scorecard is not a certification and is valid for 12 months upon completion.