A Generational Baking Legacy With Odette D’Aniello and Guest Host Milana D’Aniello

Odette D’Aniello is the Founder and CEO of Celebrity Cake Studio, a family-owned and operated retail cake boutique. The company has received numerous awards, including winning Best of Western Washington several times. With experience in the food industry, business strategy sales, and marketing, Odette has obtained additional skills in product design and brand development, event management, and team building.

She is also the Owner of Dragonfly Cakes, the wholesale sister company to Celebrity Cake Studio, designing, developing, and manufacturing delicious handmade and clean-label petit fours, tea cakes, and mini desserts. Odette is involved in various other ventures, including being a US West Accelerator Expert for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, the Owner of True Nature Distribution LLC, and a Managing Partner for 26th St Holdings.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Odette D’Aniello reflects on growing up in a bakery during her childhood in the Philippines.
Odette’s experience emigrating to Guam at 10 years old and working at her uncle’s bakery
Overcoming adversity and venturing into entrepreneurship
From cafe and bakery owner to educator: navigating the transition
The origin of Celebrity Cake Studio
Odette shares her favorite memories of being a bakery owner in Tacoma
The D’Aniello’s announce the family’s new business venture in Tucson, Arizona

In this episode…

Odette D’Aniello has owned Celebrity Cake Studio for nearly 25 years. Although she’s experienced much success as a baking entrepreneur, including receiving several awards, Odette’s journey began with humble beginnings. So how did an immigrant from the Philippines overcome adversity to own one of Tacoma’s most revered bake shops?

Odette’s career in the baking industry began at age 10 when she worked at her uncle’s bakery in Guam. Witnessing her family’s financial struggles and growing up underprivileged, her experience in baking wasn’t pleasant. Odette vowed never to work in the industry again and left at 18 to pursue a degree from the University of Arizona. When she couldn’t obtain a teaching job after graduation, Odette returned to her culinary roots and founded Celebrity Cake Studio in Tacoma after a brief stint as a cafe owner. Odette reveals that she manifested a better life by creating a vision board and having ambitious dreams. She also shares that earning a degree empowered her to believe she could live a bountiful life.

Join Odette D’Aniello on today’s The Celebrity Gourmet Podcast as her daughter Milana D’Aniello, Director of Marketing at Celebrity Gourmet Ventures, interviews her about their family’s baking legacy. In this inspiring conversation, Odette reflects on emigrating from the Philippines to Guam at age 10, overcoming adversity to become a successful baking entrepreneur, and the origin of Celebrity Cake Studio. Plus, Odette and Milana announce their latest business venture.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

Today’s episode is brought to you by Celebrity Cake Studio, a family-owned and operated cake boutique.

Celebrity Cake Studio has been baking joy into all of their artistically designed cakes and desserts for 21 years.

They are proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers that help you celebrate the sweet moments in your lives.

They have received numerous awards, winning Best of Western Washington for many years in a row and various small business accolades.

To learn more about how you can celebrate yourselves or the ones you love, visit www.celebritycakestudio.com or email them at info@celebritycakestudio.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:03

Welcome to The Celebrity Gourmet Podcast where we feature top a bakery and specialty food entrepreneurs from around the world and share stories and tips on how to create a successful life in the baking world.

Milana D’Aniello 0:16

Hi, everyone, I’m Milana D’Aniello, and I am the guest host of the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast, where I help interview women in the bakery industry to hear how they live creative lives while running their businesses. I want to encourage you to go back and check out our podcast with Katie Poppe, Founder and CEO of Blue Star Donuts, Olga Sagan of Seattle’s Piroshky Piroshky, and Sara Brook of Dessert Gallery. I don’t know if you recognize the name, but I am Odette’s daughter, here to interview the very special interviewee Odette D’Aniello. I think you know her background by now. But Mom, do you have anything you want to say? Any tips or words of encouragement for me being a very first-time host on your podcast?

Odette D’Aniello 1:09

Well, first of all, thank you for volunteering to be my very first guest host Milana Joy. I am so excited to be interviewed by you today.

Milana D’Aniello 1:21

Awesome. Okay,

Odette D’Aniello 1:23

I know you’ll do well, so just go for it.

Milana D’Aniello 1:25

Alright. Great. So I have a few questions that I wanted to ask you to kind of give some background to your listeners and then also get the story for myself about how our family ended up in the bakery industry. Today’s episode is brought to you by Celebrity Gourmet Ventures, Inc, Celebrity Cake Studio and Dragonfly Cakes. We’re a family-owned and operated specialty bakery in Tacoma, Washington. At Celebrity Gourmet, we have been baking joy into all our artistically designed cakes and desserts for 25 years. We are proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers who will help you celebrate the sweet moments in your lives. We received numerous awards, winning best of Western Washington for many years in a row, and various small business accolades. To learn more about how you can celebrate yourself or your loved ones, visit us at celebritycakestudio.com and dragonflycakes.com. Or email us at info@celebritycakestudio.com. My name is Milana, D’Aniello, very first-time host as a podcaster. But a little bit of background on me. I am the fourth generation baker in my family. I grew up in the bakery business, I have really fond memories of running around just being in the way and like stealing chocolate, playing on the carts, and then once I got older, helping out on Saturdays, and during the summer time. I just have really fond memories of growing up in the bakery. So I have a lot of positive experiences associated with hanging out with my family and learning a lot of cool stuff and being able to express my creativity from a very young age, in a place where like nobody knew or understood necessarily. So it felt like such a blessing and an honor to grow up in this bakery, where I could be around cake and cool stuff. And big machinery and fun are all the time. This experience is very different than I think the experience of my mom and my aunt and my grandparents and my great grandfather. So I just kind of want to tell the story about how our family got here. So mom, what was your experience growing up in the bakery in the Philippines? You lived in the Philippines until you were 10 years old.

Odette D’Aniello 3:46

So I did. I lived in the top of Umbra Steeno’s Bakery in the fall of Cebu. It was a bakery compound, meaning that it was a big pot of land surrounded by big gates. And within that compound was a big manufacturing plant and all the workers lived there. So they live all the men, bakers or the bakers. They live in the men’s quarters and a woman they live in a woman’s quarters, which is upstairs. And we were children, my brother and me. He ran around that that baking compound running balls and the big mixers and big ovens and you know, wooden tables and there was no OSHA or LNI, so people were wearing more shirtless, like they are just like, wet everywhere. It was a bit of a mess. So that’s what I remember. I remember learning how to make sugar cookies for the first time because my mom wanted us to learn a skill. And I remember using fork to mark the spots of my sugar cookies. And I remember that my mother decorated cake because she was a really amazing baker. And that’s how we got into that position because she had this amazing cake recipe that she sold in the, in the province and our cousin found her. Ironically, she had worked in that same bakery for my cousin’s father, whose mother’s uncle. So my mother learned how to decorate cakes. And before it was all like gum paste, but you don’t make gumpaste mulata you know how to make gumpaste flowers? You know, I taught you how to make the gumpaste flowers that’s behind me. Those are all hand done. But in the Philippines, you bought it. So you would want if there was a 1k you would go to Auntie Patsy’s Gumpaste Showroom. She made gumpaste, and she also made sugar decor. So the sugar decors are they look like they had swans. Big and swans that there are swans and then little flowers in them. So we would go and shop at Auntie Patsy’s. And bake a cake. That’s that’s what I remember.

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