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Cakes from Bronx's Valencia Bakery are center stage in Bad Bunny's 'NUEVAYoL' music video

By

Catalina Gonella

Published Jul 8, 2025

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Valencia Bakery President Raul Valera at his shop.

 

Catalina Gonella / Gothamist

By

Catalina Gonella

Published Jul 8, 2025

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When Valencia Bakery owner Raul Valera had his team put together four massive cakes for a client in February, he had no idea where they would end up.

The world found out the answer on July 4: Bad Bunny's latest music video.

Each cake was made of 10 individual round cakes that were later assembled with a retro, tiered cake stand. It took a team of six people eight hours to make the order.

But Valera and his team didn't realize what the cakes were for until they delivered them to the set of a music video at Bronx Community College.

“Bad Bunny was singing when we were building up the cakes,” he said. “We were surprised, we got excited, we started jumping, we started laughing. I mean, it was amazing. I don’t have words to explain it, but I was in shock.”

Valera was told to keep quiet about how the 77-year-old Bronx-based chain — which also has locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan — was involved in the video until its release. He was on the way to the beach in New Jersey on Friday when a family member sent him the video for "NUEVAYoL," an ode to New York City's large Puerto Rican diaspora.

One of the video's first shots features Valencia's elaborate pink-and-white cakes being rolled across a parking lot on the way to a quinceañera. Later on, Bad Bunny is seen holding a plate as he stands beside a cake decorated with lit candles.

Valera knew immediately he wanted to seize the moment.

“I honestly wanted to turn myself back into New York and say, ‘We're gonna start doing something,” he said. “It was our product, it was the whole teamwork that we did.”

The bakery created a new cake to honor the video and named it after the musician himself. “Benito’s sliced cake” is a vanilla sponge cake — dyed the blue shade of the suit Bad Bunny wears in the video — with pink strawberry filling inspired by the color of the dancers' dresses.

Valencia Bakery has named a cake after Bad Bunny.

Catalina Gonella / Gothamist

Valera said he started working at one of the bakery's franchises 18 years ago. But when the business wasn't doing well six years ago, he decided to buy it from the family who owned it.

Valera said it’s been challenging to learn how to run the business and hopes the video, which has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube as of Tuesday, gives it a push.

“We hope that we get a little boost to start growing,” he said.

Tagged

arts

bronx

brooklyn

manhattan

new york city

Catalina Gonella

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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