Tesla’s new supercharging station shows that the branded diner is having a moment

Tesla’s new Supercharger station, which opened on July 21, is nothing like your average stop for gas. The station doubles as a Tesla-branded retro-futuristic diner—and it looks like an ’80s sci-fi movie set crashed in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. 

The Tesla Diner, which boasts 80 v4 Supercharger stalls alongside a full menu of greasy finger foods, feels like a jarringly fanciful detour for the brand amidst a year that’s been anything but upbeat. As Elon Musk’s prolonged feud with President Donald Trump rages on, Tesla has suffered a constant rollercoaster of stock price slumps, protests, and poor delivery numbers (overall, the number of cars Tesla delivered in April, May, and June this year was down 13% from the year before). Investors are currently waiting with bated breath for Tesla’s second-quarter earnings report, which is due today.

For Tesla, the new diner has actually been at least seven years in the making (Elon Musk first teased the concept in 2018). And, while it may seem like a concept that came out of the blue, it shows that the branded diner is officially having a moment. Over the past few years, companies across a diverse range of brand categories have turned to the pop-up diner format as a kind of set piece to offer customers an immersive brand experience. Here are a few.

The branded diner phenomenon: part event, part signifier

As companies clamor for visibility in an increasingly crowded advertising environment, the “lifestyle brand” has increasingly become a buzzword that companies aspire to—and the branded diner can be understood as a physical embodiment of that trend. 

Lifestyle branding expands a consumer’s brand association beyond a specific core product to a way of living, based on a brand’s values. Brands might achieve this through additional elements like merch (see Erewhon’s $335 monochromatic sweatsuit), events and activations (see Sweetgreen’s Sweetlife music festival), and celebrity-backed launches (see DJ Mustard’s recent collab with Heinz), and even in-house coffee shops.

Now, several companies have found that the diner pop-up is the perfect venue to act as a brand signifier, because it puts the brand’s values and aesthetics on a public stage. These kinds of activations, which don’t necessarily push a particular product, also build brand affinity, or positive brand association, with consumers. And that’s something Tesla is in dire need of.

How Chanel, Jellycat, and Skims put diners on the menu

In August 2023, Chanel was one of the first brands to debut a branded diner, bringing the fashion house’s distinct flavor of “old money” luxury to a ’50s-esque pop-up in New York City decked out in pastel greens and pinks. That same fall, a distinctly different brand—Jellycat, the purveyor of overpriced-yet-unavoidable stuffed animals—also brought a branded diner to NYC, centered around the whimsical, innocent world of its fake food plushies. The experience has since taken off to such an extent that Jellycat has opened new locations in London, Paris, and Shanghai, as well as launching an updated “breakfast” menu at the NYC flagship.

Other brands have similarly turned their diners into an exclusive experience, including Mattel’s Barbie, which served Barbie-inspired food and drinks at two Malibu Barbie Cafe pop-ups in NYC and Chicago; Cheez-It, which served up childhood nostalgia alongside Cheez-It milkshakes at its ’70s-inspired joint; and Skims, which took over West Hollywood’s Mel’s Drive-In with a specially curated menu.

The branded diner formula seems to follow a few simple rules: Creating a space that feels like another dimension, dropping hints at obscure brand lore, and giving visitors access to products they can’t find anywhere else. Each step is in service of driving press and publicity, which, in turn, helps to boost brand reputation and sales.

The Tesla Diner serves up cyborg fare and futuristic vibes

Tesla’s diner follows that playbook, turning the EV maker’s recognizably futuristic branding into an experience that customers can literally see, touch, and eat.

Outside, the building’s curved silver facade is accented with a round entryway and elliptical windows, and inside, it’s decked out with booth seating fit for a spacecraft. Visitors can grab a burger in a box shaped like a Cybertruck, watch movie clips at a giant drive-in, and munch on popcorn served by an Optimus robot.

One subtle interior design detail you might miss is a low-contrast wall decal that describes the Tesla Mission as “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” The mission-as-mural is notable, considering Musk’s recent spat with Trump on the termination of EV tax credits as part of the administration’s budget reconciliation bill, which passed in July. The bill repealed tax credits for things like clean energy, solar panels, and heat pumps, and terminated the popular EV credit, which will now end after September 30 of this year.

A Tesla brand activation first

The diner is the first brand activation of its kind for Tesla, which has historically relied on nontraditional advertising like word-of-mouth endorsements and Twitter promotion from Musk himself. Given that Musk has arguably lost a fair chunk of his credibility with buyers and investors this year, it’s probably a smart move for the brand to turn its attention toward more conventional channels for the time being.

The otherworldly Tesla Diner experience certainly isn’t the future of EV charging stations, given that the amount of investment and construction time required would make rapid roll out impossible. However, it might be a way to drum up some more positive brand sentiment during a decidedly gloomy year.

The Tesla Diner isn’t going to unscrew the brand (as Fast Company so succinctly put it early this month) either—but we have to admit, this might be the best thing it’s done all year.