Elon Musk gets ready to enter the restaurant business

A retro-futuristic diner is rising on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. Curved, silvery and flanked by two outdoor film screens, it looks as if a flying saucer sailed out of a 1950s drive-in movie and came to rest in the parking lot.

An opening date has not been announced, but Tesla's all-night diner, theater and charging station is clearly on its way. Which means the company's leader, Elon Musk, is about to enter the hospitality business.

In 2023, when Musk posted on his social platform, X, that Tesla would build a diner in Los Angeles, he described it as "Grease meets Jetsons with Supercharging." As he has often done, he put his finger on a major piece of culture ripe for reinvention -- in this case, gas station dining in the age of electric cars, which need longer to recharge than it takes to top off a tank -- and put a visionary, gee-whiz spin on it.

That was before the chain saw. Before DOGE and the "fork in the road" email and the what-did-you-do-last-week email. Before anti-Musk protests at Tesla dealerships became weekly occurrences in LA and other cities. Before the White House promised to treat vandalism against Teslas as domestic terrorism. Before a 50% drop in Tesla's stock price took shareholders on a fast ride from "gee-whiz" to "look out below."

All of which have made Tesla's foray into restaurants a far more loaded prospect than it seemed a short time ago.

Construction on the half-acre complex, designed by engineering and architecture firm Stantec, has moved rapidly since it began in September 2023. Above white charging stations that stand in the paved parking lot like headstones are two elevated screens, which a building permit application filed in 2022 said would show films lasting about half an hour, or roughly the time it would take to charge a vehicle. Behind the diner's curved walls and windows, quilted moving blankets are wrapped around what look like circular banquettes. A sharp-eyed observer noticed that the Tesla app was updated with code for a diner menu in January.

For many months now, the company has been approaching well-known chefs about providing the food.

When Caroline Styne and Suzanne Goin, who own the Lucques Group of restaurants in Los Angeles, fielded an inquiry from Tesla in 2023 about operating the diner, they decided against it. The restaurant wouldn't have a liquor license, Styne said, which made the economics challenging, and besides, "we're not drive-in diner kind of people."

Styne hasn't changed her mind about that, but she does see the carmaker differently now. This month, she replaced her Tesla with an electric BMW.

"This person has taken such a major role in everything that's going on and affecting everybody's daily lives," she said of Musk. "And it's so crazy when you think this person wasn't even elected."

Wolfgang Puck Catering, which provides chicken potpies and other food for the yearly party after the Academy Awards, was also approached by Tesla around the same time, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions who asked for anonymity in order to speak about confidential conversations. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

The project is so closely guarded that restaurant groups must first sign a nondisclosure agreement that, among other things, forbids disclosure of the agreement itself, according to two people who requested anonymity because they had signed one.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

For many chefs, a prodigiously well-funded company offering a chance to run an innovative restaurant that is virtually guaranteed to get attention would be an answered prayer. In interviews, several restaurateurs said they would be interested if Tesla called.

"It sounds exciting," said chef Walter Manzke, who owns République in LA with his wife, Margarita. "She told me the other day that she wants to buy a Tesla, so I can tell you what side she's on."

New York-based chef John Fraser said that some time ago, he and other people in his group, JF Restaurants, began talking about gas station food, a genre where they saw room for improvement.

"Anytime that a location or a food-service style changes the way that food and beverage incorporates into our lives, I want to be involved in it," Fraser said. "This location is likely to do that because it's changing the idea of what a gas station or convenience store could be."

While registrations of Tesla vehicles in California fell about 12% last year, the Model Y was still far and away the bestselling new car in the state.

Few U.S. cities took to Tesla as quickly and enthusiastically as LA, where high gas prices, warm weather, environmental awareness, local policies and the company's head start in the electric-car race conspire to make Tesla seem, at times, like the city's default carmaker.

The area's early affection for Tesla inspired Shake Shack to approach the company with a proposal before it opened its first LA location, in 2016.

"We said, 'We're in the land of Tesla; why don't we see if they would like to put some charging stations in our parking lot?'" Danny Meyer, who helped found Shake Shack, recalled. The electric-vehicle maker wasn't interested at the time, Meyer said.

He said he had not been in talks about the diner project and probably would not take it on.

Before his restaurants enter agreements with museums, ballparks and the like, Meyer said, "we ask ourselves if our piece of art belongs in that frame." As for Tesla, "That's not a frame I would choose," he said. "I might have 10 years ago because I think it had a different shine on it at that point." Back then, the brand "was all about the environment. It seemed like a pretty cool thing."

Chef Paul Kahan, of One Off Hospitality in Chicago, said he would not be interested in working with Musk's company for several reasons. "I prefer to stay out of the madness and lean into unity," he said.

Many restaurateurs are reluctant to express any opinion about Tesla because of the combative views, both pro and con, that people have about the company now.

"I wouldn't imagine most of my friends saying yes to this," said chef David Chang, who lives in Los Angeles County. "But I couldn't imagine them wanting to say that publicly either, because of how polarizing both sides are."

Certain contentious issues used to be called the third rail of American politics. Now all of American politics is the third rail. For restaurateurs who are used to making their values on such issues as the environment and immigration part of their businesses' image, navigating the crosscurrents of public opinion can be challenging.

Any chef with other restaurants would have to take Musk's reputation into the calculus before signing a deal, said Max Block, founder of the LA hospitality-communications agency Carvingblock. On the other hand, a diner where drivers can watch a movie from their charging station while eating a meal delivered by carhops on roller skates -- as Musk has suggested -- would appeal to what Block called "a culture where people dine for experiences."

Besides, he said, public perceptions of people and companies are liable to change. "We live in a city where people love a good comeback story," he said.