There’s a sweet new addition to the University of Delaware’s Trabant University Center.

Buddy Valastro, known as the “Cake Boss,” donated a "Cake ATM" to UD and visited the University on April 9 to speak to students and participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The machine sells five different flavors of decadent slices from Carlo's Bakery and serves as a hands-on project for hospitality management students, who manage inventory, rotate stock, examine sales analytics (does chocolate sell better when placed on the top shelf? When is the best time to have a sale?), and much more.

The cakes are designed to stay fresh for at least 10 days, but they sell out much sooner, according to Sheryl Kline, deputy dean of the Lerner College of Business and Economics. 

"The vending business is important," she said. "It's great to give our students such a unique opportunity to learn by doing." 

Students in a course taught by Tim Webb, assistant professor of hospitality business management, are currently analyzing data and will make judgments that will be implemented into the machine next spring.

“Since it opened, the data has been being stored. Rather than just blindly making adjustments, we’re trying to assess first what the performance is and where there are opportunities,” Webb said. “From there we’re going to analyze the results.”

Valastro has taken an entrepreneurial approach to expand his family’s bakery business to include TV shows, bakeries, restaurants and 50 cake vending machines across North America.

Valastro attended the ceremony along with his wife, Lisa, and daughter, Sofia, a junior at UD majoring in hospitality business management. He began the day with lunch at Vita Nova, the University’s student-run gourmet restaurant, before speaking to UD students for roughly an hour in Purnell Hall.

Buddy and Sofia then cut the ribbon to officially christen the cake vending machine, which has been open in Trabant since October.

“It’s wonderful to have Buddy and Lisa here,” said UD President Dennis Assanis, who attended the event. “Every time you come to teach our students in hospitality management, we really appreciate it so much. You teach them life lessons and really show them the combination of hard work, creativity, imagination and entrepreneurship, and what they can do if they all work together.”

The event continued the University’s partnership with Valastro, whose empire includes 13 bakeries in the United States and Canada and a full-service restaurant in The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. Valastro also spoke on campus in November 2021 and October 2022 as part of the Paul Wise Speaker Series.

“It’s always such a pleasure to come here,” Valastro said. “The University of Delaware is amazing. My daughter is a junior and has been here for three years now, and she really feels like she’s learning so much to contribute to our businesses and what we’re doing. I love to come back and see these kids, just make them believe in themselves, and give them a dose of my story and life. Hopefully they walk away learning a little more about me, and hopefully I inspired some of them to follow their dreams.”

Valastro, who assumed his role as leader of his family’s business, Carlo’s Bakery, at 17 when his father died of cancer, has spent the last 30 years building his brand to include over 1,000 employees and a 100,000-square-foot bakers manufacturing facility in New Jersey.

“I just told them my story of how I became who I am and how I still work very hard, about always being humble, always working with your employees, always being the first one in and the last one to leave, and leading by example. I feel like that’s been the secret to my success,” he said.

Kline, one of several Lerner staff members who attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, also appreciated Valastro’s visit to campus.

“We’re thrilled to have Buddy back in our classroom,” she said. “He shares his life story, which really is if you work hard, if you innovate, if you think about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, you’ll be successful.”

Kline noted that UD students are managing the vending machine, including conducting data analytics and learning how to run a small business right on campus as part of their classroom learning experience.

According to Webb, data includes sales from the machine, both by product type and quantity, when the purchases are occurring, and repeat customers.

“They’re creating dashboards to analyze the data and look at different factors — if you change the prices will you sell more? If you move cakes around on different shelves, how will that affect how many red velvet cakes you sell versus chocolate cakes?” Kline said. 

“They’re really looking at ways to sell more, and that’s good practice for when you run a business. That’s what we do in Lerner College. We have classes that feature real-world experience,” Kline continued. “[The students] run real businesses. We have a restaurant in Vita Nova operated by students, we have a hotel where the students rotate through, and we do events that students plan and execute — and now they’re running a cake vending machine business.”