Yaya Lola

Starting Yaya Lola

As a Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management graduate, Katrina loved being in the kitchen. It also helped that she came from a family who liked to cook and eat. When Yaya Rosie’s kidney disease took a turn for the worst, she decided to start a business to keep Yaya Rosie’s spirits up.

“I told her we’d be partners and we’d start by serving her specialty dishes. It eventually evolved into our hidden veggie products, a combination of her scrumptious cooking and my passion for nutrition while providing easy but healthy food for my daughters,” Katrina explains. A picky eater herself, she credits Yaya Rosie’s love of food and persistence in feeding her different dishes as her inspiration to do more with food. 

The business allowed Yaya Rosie and her beloved alaga to spend more time together. They bonded while creating new dishes and trying out recipes, doing costing and sharing ideas with each other. When the business started to grow, so did Yaya Rosie’s positivity, especially when she’d hear about how much other people enjoyed their cooking. 

Who is Yaya Lola?

In 1963, Rosie packed up her bags and moved from her hometown of Bohol, to Manila. She became a yaya to Katrina’s older sister, Malou, and eventually took care of all six Guidotti children. “She spent 57 years of her life with our family,” shares Katrina. “She had a special relationship with each one of us. She had a special bond with each of us, and we loved her just as much.” 

Throughout the years, it was Yaya Rosie who would wait at the door for Katrina and her siblings, staying up ‘til 4am because she couldn’t sleep without knowing they were home safe. “Every time she’d go on vacation, even just for two weeks, we would all cry — all of us siblings and her — and she’d say ‘sobrang mamimiss ko kayo.” explains Katrina.

When the Guidotti children went on to have their own families, Yaya Rosie loved them just as much, and became Yaya Lola to them. “Every time my girls enter my parents’ house, the first thing they’d do is visit Yaya Rosie in the kitchen and give her a big hug. Yaya Rosie loved them like her own too,” she says. Anyone who’d visit the Guidotti household could see how much the family loved Yaya Rosie, and how she felt the same way.