Tesla Files Trademark for Restaurant Services

Going to grab a bite at a Tesla burger joint soon? Well, it looks like Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be serious about opening a 1950s-style diner at a Tesla Supercharger station after Tesla filed a new trademark for its brand under restaurant services as the automaker is expected to expand amenities around its charging infrastructure, including actual restaurants.

At face value, Tesla doesn’t seem to have much to do with the restaurant industry, but the automaker has actually been talking about going into the food industry for a while.

In 2018, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla plans to open an “old-school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in Los Angeles.” It was yet another “Is he joking?” kind of Elon Musk idea, but he apparently wasn’t kidding.

A few months later, Tesla actually applied for building permits for “a restaurant and Supercharger station” at a location in Santa Monica. The project laid dormant for roughly three years until new building applications were submitted earlier this year.

But those new plans didn’t include a restaurant, although it did include what would become one of the biggest Supercharger stations in the world. We thought that the involvement of a Tesla restaurant in the project was dead at that point, but Musk actually said in April that he was still hoping to have a “‘50s diner” at the location.

Now, Tesla is actually taking a serious step into making this a reality by applying for a new trademark to use its ‘Tesla’ brand in the restaurant business:

“TESLA™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of restaurant services, pop-up restaurant services, self-service restaurant services, take-out restaurant services.”

The company has applied for three new trademarks in the restaurant industry last week. One for the word ‘Tesla’ itself, one for its ‘T’ logo (on the left below), and the last one is for its own stylizing of the word ‘Tesla’ (on the right below):

This development means that Tesla plans for the restaurant to be branded a ‘Tesla’ restaurant. The company has never offered a timeline for bringing this restaurant into reality, but it now looks like it is taking steps toward that direction.

Electrek’s Take

When you think about it, it makes sense for Tesla to go into the restaurant business. I am not necessarily talking about them running restaurants themselves, but it would make sense for them to partner with experienced restaurateurs. At charging stations, Tesla has a captive market for a short period of time. There’s definitely a business in catering to that audience, and food service is certainly part of that.

Let’s see how it plays out.