A mother-and-daughter catering business in Mamelodi is preparing for its next stage of growth after a Rainbow Chicken competition opened access to professional culinary training.
Gogo Nelly Sibanyoni, 61, and her daughter Phindile, 31, have been building their catering business together since 2018, providing food for funerals, weddings, baby showers, parties and other events.
The business combines the pair’s different strengths. Gogo Nelly supports food preparation, marketing and business operations, while Phindile takes responsibility for much of the cooking.
Their customer base has largely grown through word of mouth and social media, but expanding into larger catering opportunities has presented another challenge. Some contracts require formal qualifications, while Phindile had long wanted to attend culinary school but could not afford the training.
That changed when the family entered Rainbow Chicken’s Gogo vs Gogo cooking competition.
The competition celebrates family cooking and gives participating Gogos an opportunity to showcase their recipes and culinary skills. For the Sibanyoni family, however, winning ultimately created an opportunity extending well beyond the competition.
Alongside prizes including a freezer, cash, a JoJo tank and a community food garden, Gogo Nelly received scholarship funding to support further education within her family.
She chose to invest it in Phindile.
“I believed in her work and her talent, and I knew it would open more doors for the business,” said Gogo Nelly.
The scholarship enabled Phindile to study at Capsicum Culinary Studio and pursue the professional culinary education she had previously been unable to afford.
For Phindile, the experience has changed more than her qualifications. It has influenced how she approaches food preparation and the family business.
“I used to take shortcuts when cooking. School made me see the bigger picture and understand the cooking process better. I can now use what I learnt to improve our recipes,” she said.
She is now experimenting with different cuisines, including Asian and Korean food, with the aim of introducing new ideas to the family’s catering menu.
The qualification could also strengthen the business’s ability to pursue larger catering contracts, including opportunities where formally qualified chefs are required.
Phindile is working towards establishing a commercial kitchen, while her longer-term plans include experimenting with pop-up restaurants before eventually opening a restaurant of her own.
Her ambitions stretch even further. One of her dreams is to travel internationally with football teams as a chef.
For now, mother and daughter continue working together in Mamelodi, combining Gogo Nelly’s years of practical experience and family recipes with Phindile’s newly acquired professional culinary skills.
For Rainbow Chicken, the story demonstrates how skills development can turn a competition prize into a longer-term opportunity for a family.
Rather than providing support that ends with the competition, the scholarship has given Phindile an asset she can continue using throughout her career while potentially strengthening the business supporting her family.
It also demonstrates the multiplier effect skills development can have within small enterprises. When one family member gains professional knowledge, that expertise can contribute to new products, stronger operations and access to opportunities for the wider business.
For Gogo Nelly, choosing to invest her scholarship prize in her daughter was therefore also an investment in what they are building together.
What began with family recipes and a shared ability to cook now has the potential to develop into a more competitive catering enterprise — showing how access to skills can help transform existing talent into sustainable economic opportunity.
