Hundreds of fans of the hit TLC show Cake Boss gathered at the Giant grocery store in Susquehanna Township to see its star Buddy Valastro. For them it was like meeting a rockstar.
One little girl said she wants to be a baker because of him. Another said he bakes better than her dad. Valastro has been baking since he was 10 years old. He followed in the footsteps of his father. He said “when I created things I felt a sense of self worth. A sense of satisfaction of creating something from scratch, stepping back and being like wow I feel good about what I was doing.”
His style can be abrupt at times. For participants in his upcoming spinoff show Bakery Boss, which helps improve a struggling bakery, it could often be too much. One baker said Valastro made him want to “pick him up and put him in the oven.” Valastro laughed when remembering the moment saying “nobody wants to hear what’s wrong with them. I don’t want to hear it! If you sat there and told me alright buddy you know what, you do this wrong you do that wrong. I’d be like I want to stick this guy in the oven too. Basically I had to go and see what they were doing wrong and call them out on it.”
That approach worked. Valastro says their business has quadrupled since then. Despite getting over a cold he didn’t dissapoint his fans. Some of which drove from Pittsburg to see him. For all of them his message was the same. Valastro said “inspire people to want to bake at home. I mean look, there’s a lot worse things that fourteen fifteen year olds can do than cake decorate on a saturday night.”