EV charging meets retro dining at the new Tesla Diner in Hollywood
Tesla has entered the restaurant scene with the launch of its first Tesla Diner in Hollywood, a bold fusion of retro Americana and tech-forward spectacle. Opened on July 21, 2025, the 24/7 venue sits on Santa Monica Boulevard next to what’s said to be the world’s largest urban Supercharger hub, featuring 80 V4 stalls and two towering 45-foot movie screens. Inside, 1950s diner aesthetics meet Silicon Valley theatrics: robots roam, popcorn machines hum and comfort food classics arrive in Cybertruck-shaped packaging.
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Comfort food, retro-futuristic interiors and Cybertrucks galore
The venue is a retro‑futuristic construct conceived by Tesla’s design team under Franz von Holzhausen. Its metallic curves channel Jetsons‑era aspirations mixed with classic diner motifs. Inside, diners are served by roller‑skating servers, interact with a popcorn‑serving Optimus robot and order via in‑car screens—though the latter remained in rollout phase during opening week.
Chef Eric Greenspan and restaurateur Bill Chait lead the kitchen, offering smash burgers, tuna melts, chicken and waffles, biscuits and gravy, tallow fries and novelty “charged sodas” in Cybertruck‑shaped packaging. Prices range from about US$4 to US$15, with entrées typical of classic diner fare.
Beyond dining, the Tesla Diner sells branded merchandise—T‑shirts, mini Cybertruck models and candies—while the rooftop patio, dubbed “Skypad”, doubles as a viewing platform for the drive‑in screens and display cases of early Optimus prototypes.
There are two 66-foot LED megascreens to entertain diners, primarily with Tesla and SpaceX content. These can be viewed from the Tesla Diner Skypad or streamed directly from a Tesla vehicle using the Tesla Diner app.
Corporate themed restaurants are not new to Asia—will the Tesla Diner come next?
Several popular non-food brands have expanded into the restaurant and café scene in Asia as offshoots of their main business. Notable examples include Muji Café, an extension of the Japanese lifestyle brand, with locations in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila offering minimalist Japanese-inspired food. Spam Jam Restaurant once existed in Manila, offering Spam-focused dishes. Other brand offshoots include the Agnès B Café and Fiat Café in Hong Kong and a pop-up Wall Street Journal café in Seoul.
Tesla has suggested that this flagship Tesla Diner may presage similar sites globally, possibly at Supercharger locations along long‑distance routes and at SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas, should the concept prove viable. No Asia-specific rollout has been confirmed.
So far, the Tesla Diner reads less as a refined restaurant and more as an exercise in brand storytelling—part theme park, part charging station, part fast-casual experiment. It’s a work in progress: visually striking, conceptually ambitious and potentially scalable. But at its Hollywood debut, the experience leaned more toward spectacle than substance.
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