Elon Musk asks if you want burgers and fries with your Tesla

Would you like fries with your Supercharge? Tesla just surprise opened a 24-hour diner in Los Angeles — and it offers exactly that. Officially branded the Tesla Diner & Drive-In, the chrome-and-neon venue on Santa Monica Boulevard looks a bit like someone parked a spaceship on top of a Sonic. Inside and out, it offers burgers, milkshakes, curated drive-in movie clips, roller-skating carhop servers, robot popcorn, and up to 80 EV charging stalls. The concept is all retro-futurism served with a side of lithium — and it’s unmistakably a Musk production.

On the surface, the spot is a diner with parking spots. Underneath, it’s a high-concept brand experiment wrapped in nostalgia. The Tesla Diner is designed to capture more than just foot traffic — it wants attention, content, fandom, and ultimately, dollars. Even the bathrooms are part of the show (they have space-viewing windows).

According to KTTV-TV, the 3,800-square-foot interior and 5,500-square-foot patio were designed by architecture firm Stantec, and Eater said the diner was executed in partnership with veteran LA restaurateur Bill Chait. Chef/consultant Eric Greenspan is said to be involved, as well. The menu leans classic Americana — burgers, fries, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, breakfast tacos, and cinnamon rolls — plus Tesla-branded items such as “Pie Shakes,” which are exactly what they sound like. Greenspan wrote on social media, “Let’s make happy people. And pie shakes.” Prices range from $4 for snacks to $15 for full meals, with a separate kids’ menu and locally sourced ingredients. According to Eater, Musk wanted the food to be as “epic” as possible.

And yes, the Tesla CEO has tried the food. “I just had dinner at the retro-futuristic @Tesla diner and Supercharger,” he wrote on X. “Team did great work making it one of the coolest spots in LA!”

Customers — whether they own a Tesla or not — can order milkshakes, hot dogs, or fries through the Tesla app, triggered by a geofence that pings drivers when they’re 15 minutes away. Meals come served in futuristic packaging — one popular burger is boxed in the silhouette of a Cybertruck. Two towering LED screens beam curated 15–30 minute “drive-in” movie clips directly into customers’ cars via Bluetooth, while robot “workers” (Tesla’s Optimus) make occasional cameos to serve popcorn. And the charging itself? That’s handled via Tesla’s latest V4 Superchargers; there are up to 80 stalls on-site.

The diner has been in the works since 2018, when Musk first floated the idea on X (then Twitter), promising “rock-themed” servers and a 1950s vibe. But the execution goes beyond just being kitsch. The Tesla Diner is a test case for a longstanding Musk thesis: that Tesla can do more than just sell cars. Musk wants to turn downtime into engagement, real estate into revenue, and every Supercharger location into a branded microexperience. The LA location doubles as a merch hub — selling Tesla shirts, toys, and branded candy — and an Instagram magnet, with photo ops built into every corner. 

For Tesla, the diner is a vertical integration play dressed up as a theme park. The company already owns the car, the energy, and the interface. Now it wants the idle minutes, too. Rather than letting customers wander off to a nearby Starbucks while their EV fills up, Musk is betting that they’ll stay onsite, buy snacks, and maybe post about the experience. Whether that turns into a scalable revenue stream or just stays a high-concept novelty remains to be seen.

There are also open questions about how the collected data from the experience is being used. Tesla’s app already tracks location, charging behavior, and purchase history — and now it tracks meal preferences, too. With geofencing and Bluetooth integrations baked into the model, it’s unclear what data is being collected, how it’s being stored, or whether customers have a choice in opting out. As with many Tesla features, the frictionless user experience may come with privacy trade-offs that haven’t yet been fully disclosed.

Of course, opening day was engineered for maximum buzz. The launch happened at exactly 4:20 p.m. — classic Musk timing — on a Monday, and by evening, a line of Teslas stretched down the block. Instagram was flooded with Cyberburger photos and 10-second reels of LED-lit fries. The influencer circuit showed up. So did the critics. One food critic described their order as “better than it needs to be,” while Gizmodo writer Matt Novak offered a less conflicted take while the diner was being built: “I hate that I love it.”

This isn’t Tesla’s first foray into spectacle, but it might be its most literal. A theme-park-meets-Supercharger-meets-diner might sound strange anywhere else, but for Tesla, it feels exactly on brand. And it’s exactly the kind of buzz that the struggling car company — which is expected to post disappointing second-quarter earnings on Wednesday — needs.

Musk has hinted at expanding the concept to other cities, including a potential site at SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. “If our retro-futuristic diner turns out well, which I think it will, @Tesla will establish these in major cities around the world, as well as at Supercharger sites on long distance routes,” he posted days ago on X. “An island of good food, good vibes & entertainment, all while Supercharging!” But despite long lines on opening day, it remains to be seen how much of the novelty sticks around once the influencers leave.

Still, for Tesla, novelty is the point. Like many of Musk’s pet projects, this one functions best as a proof of concept: a glimpse of what Tesla wants to be when it’s not being a car company. Because when a company sells cars, software, energy, humanoid robots, and now hamburgers, asking if you’d like fries with that starts to sound less like a joke and more like a business model.