Gentlemen, light your ovens!
A popular thin-crust pizzeria in northern New Jersey has taken food truck culture to the next level by outfitting a pair of Tesla Cybertrucks with two-tier ovens to fire up pies on the go — and they certainly get the fast lane.
Food trucks have long claimed parking spots on the nation’s culinary scene—but never like this one.
“It’s fast and quick. It has enough power to cook a pizza in about two minutes,” Fabio Antonio Arbelaez, a longtime partner at Montville’s Columbia Inn restaurant, told The Post of the incredible culinary delight of electric car.
Fresh, hand-made, “not frozen” pizzas are cooked at lightning speed on top of the truck, thanks to a conveyor belt and high-powered oven that bakes the cakes at 600 degrees as they pass through the car.
Electric vehicles have more than enough power to handle them, he added.
Arbelaez, 43, of Parsippany Lake, repurposed Elon Musk’s controversial hard-angle vehicles, fitting them with dual grills that run on the cargo bed’s 240-volt outlet.
The 25-year pizza veteran claims the mash-up — the matte black trucks are adorned with signs that read “The Jersey Thinn Crust Pizza” — is the first of its kind in America.
“People are quite shocked to see a Cybertruck in public, and then they’re even more shocked by the pizza,” said Arbelaez, who earned the nickname “Mr. Tesla is said to have been one of the first in his area to purchase an electric vehicle.
“You get a lot of feedback on the truck – about 70% good,” he added.
As for the other 30%, no one seems to be handing out the food — just the clumsy, “Tron”-esque utensil.
“The best compliment I ever got was that the truck looks like a dumpster,” Arbelaez joked.
“She’s ugly, but she does it like nobody’s business.”
They’re even going viral for a stop at Barstool Sports’ Midtown office in early August.
Two Cybertrucks were purchased last winter to handle the increased demand for food delivery from the restaurant’s conventional food truck. Since then, when you’re firing on all cylinders—or, better yet, on battery power—electric vehicles can collectively churn out 120 pies an hour, either regular or personal-sized.
The ovens can be cleaned for eight hours at a time, Arbelaez said, and he can still travel 50 miles after the battery is discharged.
Arbelaez’s biggest challenge wasn’t even attaching the roughly 50-by-40-inch ovens, which each weigh more than 200 pounds—but getting the stoves and ingredients into an easy-to-access space.
“We custom built a slide out for the oven so when we park, we can pull it out,” said Colombia-born Arbelaez, who added that they also have room for a cooling unit to hold an ice cooler dry on the passenger side.
The Cybertruck’s tow hitch also supports 50-foot umbrellas to cover the workstation.
Arbelaez has long been a proponent of clean energy and electrical innovation. A Keck School of Medicine study linked electric vehicles to reduced air pollution and increased health benefits.
However, some reports suggest that they may not be the saviors of the environment as promised. One found that because electric vehicles are built much more densely than gas cars, their tires emit more pollutants than fossil fuel cars.
But when toe-to-toe with a Ford F-150 truck, an early Cybertruck was found in a 2019 analysis to pollute 100 times less.
Teslas have crisscrossed the Garden State as far south as Point Pleasant, while also making it to caregiving events in New York City — meanwhile, there’s already an event in the Hamptons booked for the fall.
Trucks were recently deployed at Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Somerset County to feed 200 players as they approach a tee box.
This, however, “is just the beginning,” Arbelaez proudly declared. He’s moving a mile a minute to develop the concept even further – with a more futuristic twist.
“The goal with Cybertrucks is eventually for them to deliver without a driver,” Arbelaez said.
“You just order it and it will show up at your house,” he explained. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to get off the couch to get them
#Pizzeria #Cooks #Cybertrucks #Nobodys #Business
Image Source : nypost.com