By Chuck Darrow
Whenever someone buys a sub or other item from one of the area’s six Sack O’ Subs outlets, they’re not just getting to enjoy a culinary icon; they’re playing a role in a Shore family story that began almost 80 years ago.
The Sacco family has been dishing out their signature sandwiches (called “subs” after their submarine-like shape) in Ventnor City since 1969 (the original building burned down in June, 2022 and the shop was subsequently reopened next door at 5223 Ventnor Ave. on March 1 of this year). But their tale begins a couple decades earlier at another local institution.
“I started making the subs at White House my last year of high school in 1946,” said Anthony Sacco, the 93-year-old family patriarch, referring to the granddaddy of all AyCee sandwich shops, which opened that year.
“My cousin, Anthony Basile, had opened the place when he got out of the service. And he had three partners inside of six months, and it wasn’t going well.” But that store, he added, wasn’t exactly the beloved institution we know today.
“It was basically a front for a pool room,” explained the man who goes by the nickname “Fuzzy.” So, he asked my father to go into business with him. My mother said, ‘Yeah, sure, but no pool room. The pool room is out.’ So she came to work in the White House and it became a luncheonette. I was a senior in high school at the time. I was 16.
“I started working there after school, then I worked there in the summertime for a long time. My brother [Ralph] was in the service at the time, and he came out of the service and that’s when the White House took off. It took off with subs, only cold subs. They were in the beginning.
“And then around a month, two months later, my cousin said, ‘Let’s get a piece of beef and we’ll slice it up. We’ll make steaks out of it.’ So that was my job. I started slicing up the meats, weighing them up, and we started with cheesesteaks. And as far as I know, I think we were the first sub shop in this area to [offer steak sandwiches].”
In 1951, as the Korean War raged, Fuzzy left Atlantic City to join the Navy. He returned to his home and the family business in 1955, and worked there until striking out on his own in 1969.
That first Sack O’ Subs spawned by White House has led to the six outlets run by Fuzzy’s son, Al, 62, and grandson (and namesake) Anthony. Fuzzy is no longer active in the business’ day-to-day operations. In addition to Ventnor, there are stores in Egg Harbor Township, Absecon and inside Bally’s Atlantic City, as well as two (one seasonal) in Ocean City. But the sub shop family tree has even more branches.
There are other stores started by folks who worked for the Saccos. They include Dino’s and Vic’s (both in Margate) and Pete’s in Absecon. While the owners of all the shops are obviously looking to maximize profits, there is no hint of competition or resentment among the three generation of Saccos.
“For the most part, it’s a brotherhood,” offered Al Sacco. “If you’re in that [sub shop] business, you’re not threatened by the other guy. It’s just that he’s doing business, too. But you gotta worry about who’s coming through your doors. You can’t worry about who’s going through Dino’s’ doors or someone else’s.”
As for the recipe that keeps customers coming through the doors at Sack O’ Subs, Al’s son Anthony insisted, “There’s an art to it. There’s an art to the way we tuck the meat into the bread. We put the lettuce underneath, where a lot of other restaurants put the lettuce on top.”
Fuzzy added another secret is his insistence on building “neat” sandwiches because, “I hate to make a sloppy sandwich.”
However, Al contended that, while the product is crucial, there’s more to the family’s success.
“I truly believe…you need to have a labor force and you need to take care of people. And my father was the epitome of taking care of people. And I have followed suit,” he said.
“We wound up taking care of a lot of people over the years, because you need your help. You can’t do these businesses alone — not when the volume comes in the summertime. Wintertime, it’s no problem. But in the summertime there’s volume. And the only way we can make it in this region is by being able to handle that volume.
“So you do have to pay people. And we’ve taken care of people very well, and we’ve been fortunate enough to have them come back. And the [pandemic-launched] help crisis never really bit us too bad, because we’ve been taking care of people. And we have large families, so that helps.”
And speaking of bread — which many sub/cheesesteak aficionados insist is the real secret to a successful sandwich — the Saccos have used rolls from different local bakeries through the decades; currently, all Sack O’ Subs offerings are on rolls provided by what today is known as Formica Freitag Bakery.
Speaking to Fuzzy and his heirs about the sub-shop business is entertaining and informative in its own right, but, as a nonagenarian, Fuzzy has lived through a good deal of Atlantic City history (more than half of the town’s 170 years of existence), and he has crossed paths with such notable figures as Sen. Frank Farley, the state legislator who succeeded the notorious Nucky Johnson as the city’s (and county’s) political czar, and legendary nightclub owner Paul “Skinny” D’Amato of 500 Club fame (while he was too young to have known Johnson, he did recall making fish deliveries to Johnson’s wife, Flossie in his pre-sandwich-selling days). But it was D’Amato with whom he had a personal relationship dating back to his childhood.
“Skinny was a friend of ours,” he said. “Matter of fact, my father and him, when they were kids growing up, they used to room together at my father’s house. Skinny would sleep over.
“Later on,” he continued, D’Amato “sponsored our baseball team — $400 a year. He was a nice guy as far as I knew.”
