Elon Musk's Tesla Diner Becomes 'Ghost Restaurant' In Six Months

*This content was translated by AI.

The topic of "the world's richest state-of-the-art futuristic restaurant" was also limited to six months.

According to the Guardian, a British newspaper, and an auto blog specializing in automobiles in the United States, Elon Musk's ambitious Tesla Diner has turned into a quiet "ghost restaurant" six months after its opening. Opened in Los Angeles in July, the retro-futurism-concept restaurant sold an average of more than 700 hamburgers a day in the early days of its opening, with a long line around the block, but now it has more employees than customers.

According to the Guardian's visit to the site on a Friday afternoon in December last year, the parking lot was at most half-filled, with only a few customers inside the restaurant ordering hamburgers and hot dogs or inquiring about goods. The "Skypad" deck on the second floor was empty except for two employees who hung Christmas lights. More employees were busy wiping fingerprints on chrome walls and cleaning up trash.

At the time of its opening, Optimus robots served popcorn and Star Trek was screened on a large drive-in screen, heating social media with the concept of a "supercharged space where the Greek and Jetsons met." "It's one of the coolest places in L.A.," Musk said, "If the concept succeeds, we will open a dinner in major cities around the world."

But the reality was different. Famous chef Eric Greenspan left in November, and the Optimus robot serving "Epic Bacon" strips and popcorn, which were early menus, also disappeared. Google's review rating is 3.9/5 (994 reviews), but unlike early reviews, recent reviews have criticized it as "a Wall-E-like robot bought from WishCom, a low-cost online shopping mall, with slow service, ridiculous prices."

"Tesla Diner was all about branding, and once the buzz disappeared, it could not exist on its own," Autoblog analyzed. It is expensive to compete with classical diners ($13.50, about 19,600 won), is not innovative enough to justify the promise of "future," and is not welcome to visitors outside the Tesla ecosystem.

Musk's increasingly polarized public image also served as a negative factor. Once a near-universal tech icon, he donated about $300 million (about 436 billion won) to win Donald Trump's election and made a gesture that was interpreted as a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration, leading to protests. This controversy naturally spread into the Tesla brand space.

Musk, who once envisioned expanding major cities around the world, is now making little mention of Tesla Diner. Autoblog concluded, "Even the most powerful brand in technology cannot last forever with buzz alone."

The positive change is that the reduced menu is fully stocked and the food comes out hot and fast. "The hamburger was fine and the fries were perfectly crisp," a Yelp reviewer wrote after a recent Saturday night visit. "The best is that it wasn't crowded at all."

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*This content was translated by AI.