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It wasn’t just about making a very big pot of rice, it was also about putting a taste Nigerians know, love, and argue about on a world stage.
Chef Hilda Baci while speaking on the motivation behind the world record attempt added:
“Some dreams keep us awake until we achieve them, and this is one of those dreams.”
There are some moments you plan for, and then there are moments you dream about, that, when they finally happen, you almost cannot believe you are standing in them. For us, the Gino World Jollof Festival was one of those moments. On September 12, 2025, we set out to do something extraordinary with our brand ambassador, renowned Nigerian chef Hilda Baci: make the largest serving of Nigerian-style jollof rice the world had ever seen.
Record Setting MomentIt wasn’t just about making a very big pot of rice, it was also about putting a taste Nigerians know, love, and argue about on a world stage.
Celebrating something deeply ours, and bringing Nigerians together around the food that has found its way into birthdays, weddings, Sunday lunches, celebrations, roadside spots, and countless family tables.
So we built something worthy of it.
When we announced the Gino World Jollof Festival, the response told us we were onto something much bigger than a record attempt. More than 20,000 people registered to be part of the experience. The response was so overwhelming that we had to move the event to Eko Hotel Car Park B in Lagos to create more room for the people who wanted to witness history.
Food lovers. Families. Celebrities. Creators. Influencers. Vendors. Nigerians who simply wanted to say, “I was there when it happened.”
The festival became a celebration of Nigerian food and culture, with live entertainment, food experiences, and a crowd that stayed with us through the long hours of cooking.
At the centre of it all was a six-metre-wide custom-built pot, and Hilda.
We began the record attempt on September 12, surrounded by an exemplary team and thousands of people who had come to cheer us on.
The scale was almost difficult to comprehend.
The recipe called for rice, tomato paste, oil, onions, seasoning, and spices, with rice making up at least 80% of the final weight under Guinness World Records' requirements.
The ingredients, however, were only a part of the story.
At the heart of the recipe was the flavour combination that Hilda used: Gino Party Jollof, Gino Asun Paste & Cubes, and Gino Peppered Chicken Paste & Cubes, bringing together familiar Nigerian flavours in one record-setting jollof.
The stirring. The waiting. The heat. The uncertainty. The expectation.
Nine hours of cooking, teamwork, and anticipation eventually produced something no one in that crowd or in Nigeria had ever seen before: 8,780 kilograms of Nigerian-style jollof rice.
For the food to count and for us to break the record, we had to weigh the pot and in doing so, the food in it.
How do you explain all of that effort, time, and planning, only for the pot to break? Well, it almost did, we almost lost everything in a spilt second. The tension in the venue was palpable, everyone was frightened, and rightfully so.
That was the moment we had all been waiting for, the reason for showing up. All the planning, measuring, teamwork, announcements, and support all came down to that one moment. It turned out to be a scare.
In almost every hero’s story, there is always that one time that almost looks like a loss. Our team steadied the process, and the weighing was completed.
