What happened after Tesla opened a diner in Los Angeles?
Less than six months since it opened, Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner has the feel of a ghost town.Gone is the Optimus robot serving popcorn, gone are the carnivore-diet-inspired “Epic Bacon” strips, gone are the hours-long, hundred-person lines wrapped around the block.Even the restaurant’s all-star chef, Eric Greenspan, is gone.The Hollywood burger-and-fries shop seems like a shell of the bustling eatery it was when it opened in late July.On a balmy Friday afternoon in December, the parking lot for Tesla car charging was, at best, half full.
Inside what the company describes as a “retro-futuristic” diner, a handful of people trickled in, ordering burgers and hotdogs or asking for merch.The upstairs deck, AKA “Skypad”, was vacant except for a pair of employees stringing holiday lights.More staff was busy at work, buffing fingerprints off the chrome walls and taking out the trash, than there were customers.The diner was spotless.The novelty of eating at a restaurant owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off.
When the Tesla diner opened in summer, it brought in droves of the CEO’s fans and curious onlookers.But then came the onsite anti-Musk protests, noise complaints from neighbors and customers who said menu items often sold out or, when they were available, were served soggy and cold.Greenspan, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu who helped launch the Mr Beast Burger chain, told the Los Angeles Times last month that he was leaving the Tesla Diner to focus on opening a Jewish deli called Mish.According to Eater, the chef removed his previous Instagram posts referencing the Tesla Diner as a newly minted ex-boyfriend might.Greenspan has not publicly said why he left and did not return a request for comment.
Tesla also did not return a request for comment,Greenspan and other California restaurateurs who praised the Tesla Diner faced pushback for supporting Musk,The Tesla CEO is seen as a polarizing figure who donated nearly $300m to get Donald Trump elected and then led the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in its rapid and haphazard teardown of federal agencies,During a speech at Trump’s inauguration, Musk made what rights groups have described as back-to-back Nazi salutes – something repeatedly portrayed in the picket signs held by Tesla Diner protesters,Musk has been talking about the concept of a 50s-style Tesla diner in LA since at least 2018 as part of an idea to have amenities for waiting drivers connected to Supercharger stations.
He touted the plans for it in 2023 as “Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging” and claimed the diner would launch later that year.When it finally did open in the summer of 2025, he called it “one of the coolest spots in LA” and vowed that if the concept went well Tesla would open diners in major cities around the world.So far, there is only one.“This is a pretty special diner.If you are in the LA area, it’s worth visiting,” Musk said on Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call, just two days after the diner opened.
“It’s a shining beacon of hope in an otherwise bleak urban landscape,”The diner received immense media coverage upon opening but poor reviews from restaurant critics, who described the food as forgettable and the concept as little more than a corporate branding exercise,Its menu consisted of fast-food staples like a $13,50 smash burger, AKA “Tesla Giga Burger”, and an $8 milkshake, along with more internet-coded foods like the $12 maple-glazed “Epic Bacon” strips and a small-sized $8 “Wagyu Beef Chili Cup”,A display case with Tesla merchandise featured a “levitating Cybertruck” figurine for $175 and a black hoodie emblazoned with a graphic of the diner for $95.
Tesla posted on X in October that it had sold 50,000 burgers since its opening – an average of a little over 700 a day,Musk proclaimed that month that the diner was a success and suggested that he would open others near Tesla offices in Palo Alto and Austin,Tesla has yet to announce any formal plans for expansion,On social media, the wave of food influencers making TikTok and Instagram videos about the diner slowed in the months after its opening,Reviewers commenting on the $13 hotdog or posing next to the giant drive-in screens playing Star Trek are now relatively rare.
Musk, who usually posts dozens of times a day on X, has only made scant mentions of the diner on the platform and didn’t address it on Tesla’s third quarter earnings call in October,The diner also appears to have pivoted to hosting some events, including a “Holiday Bash on The Skypad” in mid-December featuring unlimited Tesla food and beverages, plus a live DJ, for $75 a ticket,As the diner narrows its ambitions, some of the customer complaints have likewise waned,The pared down menu is fully stocked, and food came out hot and fast on the balmy Friday in December,One enthusiastic Yelp reviewer said she recently visited the diner on a Saturday night.
She posted a photo of her meal, saying “the burger was solid and the fries were perfectly crispy”.“Best part was that it wasn’t crowded at all,” she added.
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Guardian readers raise £750,000 for charities uniting divided communities
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The United States has seen the number of influenza cases climb significantly in December, coming after the most severe flu season since 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.It’s not yet clear whether there will be an increase in the total number of people who get the flu this season – or whether more people just got it at once in December – but more than 3,100 people died from the virus in the US in the year ending August 2025, according to the latest data from the CDC.As such, people who have not yet gotten a flu vaccine should still get one, according to Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University.“Bottom line for people, if they haven’t gotten vaccinated against the flu, they should get vaccinated, particularly young kids and older adults,” Nuzzo said.The spike in cases comes after a 2024-2025 flu season that was the most severe since 2018, according to the CDC
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