A New York car dealership is going viral for its mockumentary-style TikTok videos inspired by The Office.
The videos show Mohawk Chevrolet employees working at the car dealership in Saratoga County, with cameras capturing their daily duties. The series takes several elements from The Office, such as conducting employee interviews, having no laugh track, and deadpan comedic moments, to bring it to life.
Grace Kerber, the dealership's Digital Branding Creator and brains behind the series came up with the idea after she began hiding miniature ducks around the dealership for employees to find. The game was a hit amongst employees, and Kerber and her team decided to capture the buzz on camera and post it online as a series called The Dealership.
"Some people were taking bets on who it was, collecting them thinking it was a prize, or checking security camera footage," she said in an interview. "As this was all unfolding throughout the day, me and my teammates, Ben and Nate, knew we had to make some sort of content out of this and I felt it was the perfect scenario to make a mockumentary like The Office."
The first episode, "Get Ducked," which highlighted the miniature duck game, was released in June. It became a hit across the nation, attracting millions of views and pushing the employees to release more episodes based on real-life moments in the office. According to Kerber, the team keeps the planning for each episode pretty simple and lets the employees build it on their own from those real-life moments.
"As far as a script, everything is just improv! We have found that the more we plan, the less genuine or funny it feels – so we just keep the cameras rolling and hope for the best," she added.
Fans have voiced their support of The Dealership in more ways than one. The series started with 3,000 TikTok followers and has ballooned to almost 125,000 as of press time. People have actually stopped by the shop as well to meet the employees who star in the show. In addition to that support, people have also expressed how Netflix should pick up the series.
"Mohawk Chevrolet needs to get picked up by Netflix ASAP because I can't stop watching these," one said in the comment section under one of the videos. Another wrote, "This is great. Every workplace should film their own workplace comedy."
The Chevrolet corporate page even added, "Watch out, Hollywood," with the eyes emoji attached. In an interview with The New York Post, Kerber teased that a collaboration with Chevrolet based on one of the episodes might be in the works.
Check out to their TikTok for more episodes.