How a New Jersey pizza guy became a TikTok star

Had Salvatore Mandreucci been asked to bet everything on his best guess of what his life would be like in 2023 he would be flat broke. He never could have seen it coming.

Salvatore is 26 years old. His father owns Marcello’s Pizza Grill in Hamilton, New Jersey. He worked there as a kid, reluctantly. He never wanted to work in a pizza shop. He also hated, no, passionately despised, in fact, TikTok. For two things he had no interest in, both have made him a star.

He tried this and tried that. He worked at Fed Ex for awhile. No matter what he did he always ended up back short-term at his dad’s pizza restaurant where they fought like cats and dogs.

When TikTok came along he mocked it. Well wouldn’t you know these two things in his life have wound up defining him. When he had opened his own little pizza shop in Philadelphia he decided to mock some of his more annoying customers as well as mock TikTok itself.

Salvatore came up with the cheesy name of Sally Slices and of his first video to put on the app he so hated he joked with friends, “I’m going to have 2 million followers on this piece of s--- app!” He proceeded to make a video imitating some of the ‘Karens’ that came into his place.

It was a lark. Something he did to kill time. And he was wrong about his prediction of 2 million followers.

Try 4.3 million. Plus over a million followers on Instagram and 154 million likes on his social videos.

As that fame grew he went back to work at his father’s place and drew a ton of followers into his dad’s brick and mortar shop to become customers. People stop by just to meet him.

The videos he makes in his Sally Slice alter ego are not all sarcastic. They’re actually pretty friendly and positive. Whenever he asks a customer in a video where they are from his reaction is the same whether they’re from across town or from around the world. “Right down he road!”

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A post shared by Salvatore Mandreucci (@sallyslices_)

Sometimes he’ll give inspirational advice like, “The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies” and “one day someone will break you so hard that you’ll become unbreakable.”

Where’s it all going? Salvatore says right now he’s made more fame than he has fortune. He’s hoping to either monetize it or turn it into something entirely different. An acting career possibly.

I’m going be so honest, I don’t know what’s gonna happen in my life. And I’m okay with that,” Mandreucci told nj.com. “Everything I’ve done led me up to this point. If I just keep being me and do what I believe is right. It will bring me to the right stages in my life.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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