Gentlemen, start 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 take the fast lane.
Food trucks have long claimed parking spots on the nation’s culinary scene — but never like this.
“She’s quick and fast. It has enough power to cook a pizza in about two minutes,” Fabio Antonio Arbelaez, a longtime partner with Montville’s Columbia Inn Restaurant, told The Post about the electric vehicle’s remarkable culinary pep.
Fresh, handmade pizzas — not frozen — are cooked at lightning speed atop the truck, thanks to a conveyor belt and high-powered oven that toasts the treats at sizzling 600 degrees as they pass through the machine.
The electric vehicles have more than enough power to handle them, he added.
Arbelaez, 43, of Parsippany Lake, repurposed Elon Musk’s hard-angled, controversial vehicles by mounting them with double-stacked roasters that run on the cargo bed’s 240-volt outlet.
The 25-year pizza veteran claims the mash-up — the matte-black trucks are emblazoned with signage that reads “The Jersey Thinn Crust Pizza” — is the first of its kind in America.
“People are shocked enough to see a Cybertruck in public, and then they’re even more blown away by the pizza,” said Arbelaez, who earned the nickname “Mr. Tesla” for reportedly being one of the first in his area to purchase an electric vehicle.
“You get a lot of reactions to the truck — about 70% good,” he added.
As for the other 30%, nobody seems to be dissing the food — just the clunky, “Tron”-evoking vessel.
“The best compliment I ever got was that the truck looks like a dumpster,” Arbelaez joked.
“She’s ugly, but she gets it done like nobody’s business.”
They are even going viral for a stop at Barstool Sports’ Midtown office in early August.
The two Cybertrucks were acquired last winter to deal with elevated catering demand from the restaurant’s conventional food truck. Since then, when firing on all cylinders — or, rather, batteries — the electric vehicles can together produce a whopping 120 pies per hour, either regular- or personal-sized.
The ovens can toast away for eight hours at a time, Arbelaez said, and he can still drive 50 miles after that battery drain.
Arbelaez’s biggest challenge wasn’t even attaching the approximately 50-by-40-inch ovens, which each weigh more than 200 pounds — it was getting the cookers and ingredients into a space that was easy to access.
“We custom-built a slide for the oven so when we park we can pull it out,” said Colombia-born Arbelaez, who added that they also have space for a refrigeration unit to hold a passenger-side dry ice cooler.
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 tied electric vehicles to both a reduction in air pollution and an increase in health benefits.
However, some reports suggest that they may not be the environmental saviors as promised. One found that because EVs are built much more densely than gas guzzlers, their tire treadwear emits more pollutants than fossil-fueled cars do.
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.
The Teslas have traversed the Garden State as far south as Point Pleasant, while also making it to catered events in New York City — meanwhile, there’s already a Hamptons event booked for the fall.
Recently, the trucks were deployed to Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Somerset County to feed 200 players as they approached a tee box.
This, however, “is only the beginning,” Arbelaez proudly proclaimed. He’s moving a mile a minute to develop the concept even further — with a more futuristic bend.
“The goal with the Cybertrucks is eventually to have them 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 will have to get up off your couch to get them.”
