A comedy about teenagers who juggle school, a mad boss and the minimum wage in a small-town pizzeria has moved from short YouTube sketches to Netflix along with the cast that played it on YouTube. Here the short-form creator, screenwriter and actor are impossible to separate. Netflix has ordered Minimum Wage for 28 episodes.
The series' move to Netflix is a big win for creators, according to Dan Page, who leads media partnerships and licensing at TikTok. “Ultimately, this proves there is no real difference anymore between a creator and a screenwriter or actor,” he wrote on LinkedIn. In his view, brands that still see creators as influencers are a step behind the streamers.
A pizzeria with a ready-made audience
The streamer reached for a format that already had an audience. As of May 2026, the original Minimum Wage had more than 30 million views on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram since its launch in May 2024. The series is meant to keep its fast, short-video rhythm.
On Netflix the short videos became a workplace comedy shot as a mockumentary, with a pizzeria full of harried, underpaid teenagers. It premiered on 26 October. A.V. Club writes about a first season of 14 episodes, Broadcast about 28 episodes of twelve and a half minutes each.
According to Page, the Minimum Wage move is “a low-lift way” for Netflix to stay tapped in to internet culture, bring in viewers without big costs and become the main platform for both traditional and new media. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said of YouTube in January 2026 that it already carries feature films, new episodes of series, American football games and the Oscars ceremony, that it is TV, and that Netflix competes with it on every front, for talent, for advertiser money and for subscribers.
Names in the credits
Talent from traditional and new media meets in the credits of Minimum Wage. Page writes that seven creators handled the writing, directing and lead roles, and that during filming Netflix added a further eight episodes to the 20 it had ordered. Seven actors from the original videos are also in the cast listed on Netflix's page. Among the two showrunners and writers is Jeremy Garelick, whose name Netflix links to the films The Break-Up and The Hangover. The series is produced by American High. Garelick founded the group, which makes sketches and low-budget films set in high school and whose videos have more than seven billion views since 2022.
In September NBC picked Grace Reiter from the American High crew as one of two new cast members for the 52nd season of the sketch show Saturday Night Live. She described the original series as very scrappy and homemade, with the cast trying to carry over to a bigger production what had worked in their online sketches. The same actress also has writing and directing duties on the Netflix pizzeria series that began as YouTube sketches.
According to Page, creators still need brand support for their YouTube series or independent financing. In March 2025 Sarandos said that YouTube does not give pro-am creators money upfront, so they shoot at their own risk, and that they can try out an idea there and Netflix then takes on the financial risk. According to Page, the streamer put up a budget for 28 episodes from the small-town pizzeria.
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