Golden Penny Soup Festival Masterclasses Equip Ibadan Attendees With Culinary Crafts And Business Skills

The Golden Penny Soup Festival in Ibadan served more than bowls of soup last Saturday, as its masterclass sessions at Liberty Stadium gave attendees practical lessons on turning food, creativity, and traditional skills into viable income opportunities.

The masterclasses formed an important part of the festival experience, reflecting Golden Penny’s effort to combine its celebration of Nigerian food culture with opportunities for attendees to learn skills and discover new ways to build value from their interests.

One of the sessions was led by Chef Abi, also known as MealsbyAbi, who took participants through The Food Creator’s Money Playbook. She focused on the business side of food content creation, highlighting the difference between producing attractive food content and knowing how to convert creativity, expertise and an audience into sustainable income.
Her session explored how to build values, identify monetisation opportunities, and position food creativity as more than a passion.

Speaking at the masterclass, Chef Geena, one of the facilitators, challenged participants to look beyond Nigeria’s familiar soup favourites during her session, “The Nigerian Food Nobody Is Talking About”.
She highlighted the abundance of lesser-known Nigerian foods and ingredients that remain largely unexplored, noting that many people repeatedly gravitate towards popular options such as Egusi, Ewedu, Gbegiri, and Efo Riro despite the country’s vast culinary heritage.
The session also explored how forgotten foods could become powerful tools for storytelling and audience engagement through nostalgia and origin stories.

Chef Geena further discussed opportunities for monetising niche Nigerian food concepts across the food chain, including specialised pop-up dining and supper clubs. She also examined creative ways of presenting and naming traditional foods to appeal to younger audiences, particularly Gen Z and Gen Alpha, while elevating plating and aesthetics.

For participants interested in craft and fashion, Adeola delivered a hands-on tie-dye masterclass focused on monetising the skill.
Attendees explored how simple fabrics could be transformed into vibrant and distinctive designs while learning some of the practical considerations involved in producing quality tie-dye pieces.

According to Adeola, “No two tie and dye can be the same because it’s handmade, but it can be similar.”
She also explained that dye bleeding can often be linked to fabric quality, stressing the importance of using 100 per cent cotton and authentic materials when working on tie-dye projects.

Still at the event, Chef Polan, in a session titled The Price for a Plate, took participants behind the figures involved in running a food business.
The session examined the real cost of selling food in today’s Nigeria, covering ingredients, operational expenses, and the importance of pricing meals properly to achieve profit.

For aspiring food entrepreneurs, the masterclass provided practical lessons on moving beyond simply cooking good food to understanding the business decisions required to make a food venture sustainable.
Through the sessions, the Golden Penny Soup Festival demonstrated that feeding people could go hand in hand with empowering them.

While the festival celebrated Semovita, soups, and Nigeria’s rich culinary heritage, its masterclasses gave attendees something equally valuable to take home: knowledge, practical skills, and ideas that could potentially become new streams of income.