Images courtesy of Robert Asami

As some of you may have seen circulating on the internet… we put a commercial espresso machine on a Tesla Cybertruck… and are serving coffee out of it. I have been spending probably way more time than I should reading through everyone’s reactions and comments. Many reactions of awe: ranging from awe”some” and aw”ful”. Which I totally get.

We wanted to share more about this project: why we decided to pursue this very crazy, very polarizing endeavor, and where we’re headed. Hopefully this will help answer a lot of questions and comments we’ve received (or maybe trigger even more questions? I’ll try my best to answer what I can).

For those that don’t have time (or the attention span like myself) to read through the entirety, here are the 4 reasons (in combination, not in isolation) why we decided to pursue this project. And ultimately, these 4 reasons are to support our mission to bring excellent coffee experiences to people.

More power: Bring the power of true commercial espresso machine a la 240V to meet our growing volume
Maintain open customer engagement: Maintain the ability to still engage with our customers in an open way (i.e. without being separated by walls or barriers like a food truck would), at the Farmers’ Market and beyond
Flexibility to test and share insights on different equipment and workflows: Not being tied to a physical building, and designing the truck platform to be modular means we’ll have flexibility to experiment with different types of equipment and workflows, and share the coffee and our insights with others. This is part of our collaboration with our friend Brian Quan and Voltage Coffee Supply (and possibly others!).
Have fun: Continue to have fun in sharing these experiences with others — I admittedly was initially very hesitant about the truck aesthetically. It’s a crazy-looking truck for sure, and turns a lot of heads for better or for worse. But we hope in getting your attention, we can encourage people to join us in experiencing the fun and delight that serving coffee out of it can be.

And now for the longer bedtime reading explanation…

With career backgrounds around solving problems vs. force-fitting solutions, Ming and I critically analyzed whether the Cybertruck was the best solution to solving our problems and aligned to our mission. We finally concluded that it did, approaching it from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, holistically. This unconventional large piece of equipment is undoubtedly a significant investment, and was one we didn’t decide on without careful consideration.

We concluded the following 4 reasons for why the Cybertruck was the appropriate option for us:

1. More Power - 240V

Our previous espresso setup: La Marzocco GS3 MP+Sanremo YOU
Image courtesy of Robert Asami

We’ve grown a lot since our first Farmers’ Market in July 2023. We’ve evolved from serving 80 drinks, to close to 200 drinks. We’ve now outgrown not just one, but two prosumer machines (the La Marzocco GS3 and Sanremo YOU). TL;DR, for prosumer machines, there are power limitations for how fast the steam pressure can recover and temperature stability in the grouphead for espresso, if shots are pulling back to back. So while the espresso shots may be ready, they may not be pulled at the consistent temperature or the steam wand needs time to catch up and build up steam pressure to steam.

This results in:

Shots possibly sitting idle and cooling down
Shots not tasting the best due to temperature inconsistencies
Drinks taking longer to complete - at our peak service hour, customers would have to wait 15-20 minutes for their drink to be served

All in all, bad news bears – a suboptimal experience for our customers

These machines utilized 120V (the typical wall outlet you see at your house… 🔌), for which we’d use 3 batteries that we’d have to slowly charge and bring, along with a dizzying rat’s nest of extension cords to total the 12 kwH (kilo watt hours) that could last our 4-hour service.

With the Cybertruck, we’re able to utilize both 110V AND 240V directly from the truck itself, without needing to do any special power configuration. Most (I want to say…all?) true commercial café espresso machines utilize 240V to supply the significant energy required to heat up their significantly larger steam and brew boilers.

The increased power allows us to implement true commercial (high volume, high consistency – not just some “NSF” certification) café-level equipment we could use to ensure we could serve our customers a drink that was excellently prepared and served in a timely way.

Alright, but how many cappuccinos can you make? Like 5?

On top of having 240V, the Cybertruck has a whopping 123 kwH (TEN TIMES the capacity of our previous batteries, for those who like me, aren’t that great with math).

Ming (please see aforementioned note about my math skills - he is the certified mechanical engineer) did the analysis to verify the technical capabilities and requirements… and the short of it is that we can serve a LOT of coffee with this truck. Assuming we’re not going anywhere crazy far, we’d have enough power for at least 30 hours of service. Depending on how fast of a barista you are, that could mean 1,000+ cappuccinos???

If you want the nitty gritty math, we figured out the max power draw of the equipment we need. For example, the Sanremo Café Racer has a peak power draw of 6kw. So doing the maths (this is where Ming is ghostwriting) …. Means 20 hours. However, coffee making equipment doesn’t consistently run at max power - especially well insulated espresso machines. Conservatively, most machines draw less than half the max power. Our previous espresso setup ran 6 kwH, mostly from the espresso machines, so hence 30ish hours is a closer estimate to what is teeeeechnically possible considering the new equipment.

Ok but why not gas generator? Can’t you get 240V with a gas generator?
That will be addressed in the second point. As I mentioned, we considered these reasons altogether.

Ok but why a Cybertruck? Why not an F150 Lightning or a Rivian R1T (a la Proud Mary)

	Tesla Cybertruck	Ford F150 Lightning	Rivian R1T
120V/240V	✅ 120V and 240V	✅ 120V and 240V	120V Only
Amps at 240V	✅ 40A Can definitely power everything	🆗 30A Can power most things	N/A
Bed size	✅ 6.5’	5.5’	4.5’
Automatic Tonneau	✅ Yes	No	No
Height Clearance for commercial espresso machine with tonneau?	✅ Yes	No	No
Adjustable Air suspension Can it lower to comfortable working bar height?	✅ Yes	No	✅ Yes
Under-bed storage Can it store more stuff? Like gray water tanks, pumps, etc.	✅ Yes	No	✅ Yes (ok the gear tunnel is kinda neat too)
Head turner?	✅ 👀 Yes	Looks like a regular F150	Not as much

2. Maintain open customer engagement

This has and remains an important tenet for how we’re building Moonwake Coffee Roasters. At a high level, the truck allows us to:

Avoid the use of gas generators
Avoid the presence of physical barriers between us and our customers

What do gas generators have to do with anything?

They are very loud and smelly - this would impact our ability to have a conversation with our customers, having to yell over the loud drone of the generator kicking on and off.
Using gas generators would mean we’d lose our stall spot the Farmers’ Market, and move to a different spot.
Let me elaborate… this is a weirdly significant factor:
Where the Farmers’ Market operates in the De Anza College Parking Lot B is covered for the most part by solar panel arrays, save for the ends of the market. And for whatever reason, the powers that be at De Anza College dictated that gas generators are not allowed to operate under the solar panels.

Any stalls utilizing gas generators, would be relegated to the end of the market outside of the solar arrays - an area largely abandoned and exposed, and unfortunately close to a very popular fish mongering vendor.

We were initially posted up at the end of the market, when we started our residency using a gas generator. While the smell of fresh coffee is strong, it was not powerful enough to overcome Poseidon’s perfume. After a couple weeks, we very quickly transitioned to electric battery energy, which allowed us to be next to vendors serving baked items, a much more appropriate complement. I’m grateful for the customers that trekked to our booth and gave us a shot, and have become our loyal customers since.

So it was important for us to keep using electric battery power - and the Tesla Cybertruck is a big battery you can drive.

Well, why not a regular food truck?

As we think about our current and future pop-up opportunities, it was important that our customers still felt connected to us in the overall process of bringing them a great coffee experience. With the Cybertruck’s open platform, we were able to design an experience that lets customers see and be part of the process - by not being separated by obstructing walls or barriers that a food truck or van would have. People can watch our team craft together their drink - whether it be a cute lil cortado or a beautiful swan adorned latte (probably poured by our resident latte artists, not me).
The Cybertruck also allows us more mobility than a food truck would have – where space and access may be challenging for a larger, less off-road capable vehicle. We’ll have the flexibility to bring our experience to more unique locations.

3. Equipment and workflow flexibility

Through a unique collaboration with our friend Brian Quan and Voltage Coffee Supply and how we (again, I mean Ming) designed the structural platform to fit in the truck, we’re able to easily swap in and out different types of coffee/espresso equipment.
In this collaboration, we’ll be putting the various equipment through the gauntlet in service (at the Farmers’ Market and other pop-up events), and provide an in-depth review of its performance, pros, cons, etc.
As prospective retail café owners ourselves, we understand that selecting the right espresso machine for your shop is no trivial decision. I’d imagine getting actual on-bar insights of its commercial performance would help someone make an informed decision (I know we’d definitely benefit from it). However, there seems to be very little information and content out there for commercial equipment from the actual people using it. I think understandably so, because café owners and baristas are occupied with doing their primary jobs, which is already tiring. Having the bandwidth and resources to provide reviews and insights is challenging, and even more so challenging to swap in and out machines which disrupts workflow and service.
Espresso is also not the only way to prepare coffee — we’re also looking to showcase other unique pieces of equipment that can brew great coffee, and share that experience with others.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to work with both Brian and Voltage to share these insights - and hope they will be informative and useful for others considering commercial espresso equipment for their shops!

Check out Brian’s YouTube channel for the Moonwake Cybertruck Coffee series, where we’ll be chronicling our journey in using this very unique platform to bring more coffee, more coffee education / knowledge on equipment, brewing, tasting, etc.!

4. Have fun

Throughout our journey in coffee, we’ve always made sure to remember to have fun and enjoy the process. It’s very easy to get caught up in the stress of trying to build a business, but we have to remember to take a step back and enjoy the process. Though to be fair, I think Ming probably aged 5 years in the immense stress of designing, building, and all things involved in getting the truck experience ready in time for our first launch (I’ll share a bit about it below)…
There’s great satisfaction in actually successfully executing a crazy idea you have - and especially if you get to share it with other people to enjoy. Our team gets to have a great time preparing espresso in a really unique setting, our customers get to enjoy their beverage and hopefully smile and laugh at how crazy we were to do this idea.

We hope people will have fun enjoying this project with us, and we’re looking forward to seeing how this will further unfold. We have several longer term goals in mind for the truck — which include community and education events, complimenting our future café operations, and more.

We can’t please everyone, but we’ll try our best to give people an awesome experience 🤘🏻

We’ll have another post out soon detailing the build, but please enjoy this gallery of the build