The Painful Events That Shaped Cake Boss Buddy Valastro

Buddy Valastro, born Bartolo Valastro, has spent nearly two decades as a TV personality specializing in decadent cakes. But in life, sometimes a little salt gets in with the sweet and can either enhance the flavors or overpower them. Even with a successful TV career and a famous brick-and-mortar bakery, Valastro's life has taken several unfortunate turns.

But like the Cake Boss he is, Valastro traversed each unfortunate life event head-on, finding the silver lining in every dark cloud. From losing his dad at an early age to surviving a terrible freak accident, Valastro has had to overcome several challenges while creating a dessert brand for an entirely new generation. It may not have been easy to get to that point, but, as they say, it's more about the journey than the destination. Let's look at some of the painful things in his career that were life-changing but not always for the better.

Before Buddy Valastro became the Cake Boss he is today, he had to learn how to bake. That responsibility would fall lovingly onto his father, Bartolo Valastro Sr., an already accomplished baker who had immigrated to America from Sicily when he was 15. Valastro Jr. was born in Hoboken but grew up in Little Ferry, New Jersey. 

Valastro Sr. had nothing when he came to America, but coming from a family of bakers back home, he had skill, and he applied that to his life, teaching Valastro Jr. everything he knew. The young Valastro was good at it, too. By the time he was 16, he had honed his cake decorating skills. "But when I was 17, my dad passed away," he told The Seattle Times. "I dropped out of school in junior year of high school and went to work full-time. I had to prove myself over and over." 

Valastro never went back to school. Instead, he doubled down on refining his baking skills. In a Facebook post in 2019, he wrote that he still feels his father's influence. "It's been 25 years since I lost my father and not a day goes by where I don't think of him and thank him for everything he taught me," he said. "Still loved and still missed."

In 2014, Buddy Valastro was arrested for driving under the influence. The prosecutor claimed that when Valastro was being arrested, he tried to use his privilege to work his way out of the situation. "I had a couple drinks," he told police, as reported by ABC News. "You can't arrest me! I'm the Cake Boss."

A year later, Valastro opened up about the DWI to Extra. He said he thought he was fine after going to a business dinner, where he had "one glass too many." Valastro would plead guilty to his crime and have his license revoked for 90 days, along with paying $300 fine. He apologized to the court, swearing he would never make that mistake again. Although this infraction was an embarrassment to the famous baker publicly, it wasn't a major setback to his career, with Valastro continuing to host his popular "Cake Boss" reality show during that time.

While Buddy Valastro's show "Cake Boss" was a reality show that mainly focused on the everyday life at his bakery, Carlo's Bake Shop, there was a time he pulled a "Jerry Springer Show" moment in a controversy the star likely wishes people would forget. In 2012, the famous confectioner decided it would be funny to trick his "Cousin Anthony," Antonio Bellifemine, by having the transgender entertainer and TV personality Carmen Carrera come on the show and flirt with him. She even landed a smooch on his cousin's face, at which point Valastro said, "That's a man, baby!"

Carrera wasn't pleased with how "Cake Boss" handled her appearance. She claimed that she was told she would be spotlighted as a role model for the transgender community. "I SPECIFICALLY asked the producers of 'Cake Boss' NOT to disrespect me or trans people," Carrera wrote on Facebook (via Los Angeles Times). The episode was subsequently pulled from rotation by TLC. Valastro claimed that he had tried to apologize to the "RuPaul's Drag Race" alum, and also apologized to the entire LGBTQ+ community. Bellifemine also addressed the incident on X, then known as Twitter, in which he apologized for his ignorance and added that Carrera was "a beautiful woman" whom he deeply respected. "No harm intended," he wrote. "My apologies."

The pandemic devastated a lot of businesses in 2020, and Buddy Valastro's was no different. As communities went into lockdown, a lot of hospitality business owners were left without customers. Valastro had built himself quite a brand with Carlo's Bake Shop, running multiple locations across the country in 2020. However, his business took a dip as the pandemic barreled through the country.

Valastro claimed in late 2020 that a Las Vegas location was performing poorly with the loss of conventions (but struggled slightly less over the weekends), and that his New York store was also suffering due to the lack of Broadway shows. His mall bakeries also struggled. "It's really a tough, tough time in the restaurant, bakery, and retail business right now," Valastro told Yahoo Finance Live at the time. "We are probably doing about 40% of what we would normally be doing."

Being a baker, Buddy Valastro's hands are his tools; taking one away might destroy his trade. In 2020, while trying to fix a component of his home bowling alley, the Cake Boss suffered a freak accident in which his dominant hand was impaled inside the machine. 

A representative told People how it happened in detail. "After trying to release the bowling pin from the cage mechanism, his right hand became lodged and compressed inside the unit," they said. He then watched as a metal rod "slowly and repeatedly [impaled] his hand three times between his ring finger and middle finger." The injury was so severe that Valastro was unsure whether he would ever be able to bake again.

Recovery was an uphill battle, with Valastro calling in a renowned orthopedic surgeon to help him recover. His wife, Lisa, was adamant that all was not lost through the whole ordeal, telling People, "He will bake again, even if he has to use his left hand. Trust me." In 2021, Valastro gave an update on his injury, claiming that his hand was 95% better.

Mary Valastro, Buddy Valastro's mother, was born in 1948 in Altamura, Italy. She and her husband, Buddy Valastro Sr., immigrated to the U.S. and went on to buy a pastry shop in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1964. Little did they know that it would become part of pop culture history. In 2009, Buddy Jr.'s reality show "Cake Boss" became a TLC Network hit, and, subsequently, so did the bakery. 

Mama, as they would call her in the series, was widowed in 1994. She carried on with the family's bakery business, which became the location for the show. Valastro said she was the backbone of the business. His relationship with his mother was very close. "My mother is the matriarch of the family," Valastro once said in a TLC video to mark Mother's Day. "She's my hero."

But in 2013, the Valastros received devastating news: Mama Mary was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Four years later, she passed away at 69 years old. After the loss, Valastro took some time to grieve and wouldn't go near the Hoboken bakery out of grief. He did return to work one month later, saying his mother would have wished for that. "She doesn't want me to stop," he told People. "She wants me to be the patriarch of the family and keep doing what I'm doing."

In the early 2000s, Buddy Valastro began his career in television — but as a contestant, not a host or judge. His shop, Carlo's Bake Shop, was already a well-known establishment in Hoboken, famous for making elaborate wedding cakes. That success led to the Food Network asking him to participate in one of its shows, "Food Network Challenge." Valastro was thrilled to take on the contest as it would lead to more publicity for his bakery.

Witty and likable, he didn't suffer from stage fright. However, Valastro would suffer some setbacks. He competed in three "Food Network Challenge" baking competition shows and lost three times. But in his fourth contest, he took home a grand prize of $10,000, and thus the "Cake Boss" was born. Cable network TLC eventually reached out to him about doing a cake show on his own, which was when  Valastro pitched "Cake Boss." As a reminder of his early failures and eventual success on reality TV, the check Valastro won on "Food Network Challenge" is proudly displayed in his office at Carlo's Bakery. "It's important to learn from your failures and be a scrappy survivor," he later reflected to the Syracuse University Whitman School of Management. 

Buddy Valastro went from small business artisan to reality TV star in a short space of time. Not long after appearing as a relatively unknown contestant on the Food Network, Valastro had a show of his own. The whiplash of early stardom was welcome; it was something he hoped would draw more attention to his brick-and-mortar Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey.

However, this success didn't come without effort. Valastro has noted that his commitment to his work has previously had unintended side effects. He experienced his first panic attack at 27 years old. It was so bad that he even visited the emergency room. "I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest," Valastro later told CNBC. The incident ultimately led Valastro to rethink his approach to work. "Over the years, you learn to adapt to it, so I know when the pressure's coming," he said. "There comes a time then you say I need to detox; I need five minutes to clear my head."

At one point, "Cake Boss" Buddy Valastro had at least 14 Carlo's Bake Shop (which is also known as Carlo's Bakery) locations across the nation. However, that number has significantly fallen over the past few years. During the pandemic, his company suffered revenue loss because people were ordered to stay at home. Inevitably, that led to bakery closures.

At the time of writing, there are just six locations across the U.S. That includes the original Carlo's Bake Shop in New Jersey, which Valastro's family bought from the founder, Carlo Guastaferro, in 1963. This may have been a sentimental setback for the Cake Boss, but it certainly didn't cause him to give up. Valastro still has several eateries and has also embraced online ordering, switching his Santa Monica location from a brick-and-mortar bakery to an online-only operation in late 2023.

With technology developing so quickly and the population embracing a convenience culture after the pandemic, Buddy Valastro had to consider pivoting from his traditional retail model to a high-tech one and decide whether to keep things familiar or change his business model completely. With sales falling during the pandemic, Valastro joined the restaurant owners getting clever to weather the pandemic. "It's about trying to innovate and use quality," he said at the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association's 2024 Show in Houston (via The Shelby Report). "I think that's what has to happen," he added. "We have to be able to innovate in not only the flavor profiles, but the razzle dazzle."

When something has been working in a certain way for so long — especially a business with a history as rich as Carlo's Bake Shop — changing the model can be difficult. Valastro might have been losing profits thanks to the pandemic, but the setback also opened up opportunities to do business in a modern world. These new opportunities have included a lineup of cake vending machines in cities such as Las Vegas and Orlando, similar to the famous Sprinkles cupcake ATMS, dispensing both full-size cakes and individual slices.

Sometimes, family and business don't mix. Buddy Valastro's sister found that out for herself when the "Cake Boss" star fired her while filming an episode of the popular reality show. His sisters, Maddalena Castano, Lisa Valastro, and Grace Faugno, often appeared on the show, helping him with the business along with his late mother. Valastro also has another sister named Mary Sciarrone, who worked on the show as a cake consultant.

Sciarrone wasn't great at customer-facing duties on the show and was often rude to both customers and employees. Over time, Valastro grew impatient with her attitude, and in the show's fifth season, he fired her on camera. He also said that she would never manage the bakery. The tension between the remaining family members was weird afterward, but with his sister gone, things seemed a little more relaxed. Despite the bust-up, Sciarrone eventually returned to the business, and she and Valastro seemingly remain close, often taking family pictures for social media.