Restaurant Name Ideas

How to Name Your Restaurant Business

Hi, I’m Marlena, your naming expert. If you are looking to find cool name ideas for your restaurant business, you’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we will take you through the entire process of coming up with a name, from the initial preparation to the brainstorming stage, and up to finally deciding on a name.

To illustrate the naming process, I will be coming up with name ideas for a fictional cafe I created.

Here’s a one-line description of my fictional restaurant:

A homey and inviting breakfast and lunch cafe serving fresh and delicious meals.

Preparation

Write a Brand Brief

Without a clear idea of what your business is about you are going to have a hard time generating name ideas that hit the mark. That’s why we suggest creating a brief outlining the major touchpoints of your café.

Answer the questions below as succinctly as possible. You want this brief to help you define your brand. That clarity will help you later in the brainstorming process.

What Does Your Company Do? (Describe your company and the initial products and/or services that you will provide.)

My answer: A homey, friendly, and inviting breakfast and lunch café

Who is Your Target Market? (Describe the customers/demographic your business intends to cater to.)

My answer: Morning and midday folks looking for a relatively quick and inexpensive meal that is simple and tasty.

What is Your Company’s Mission Statement? (Your mission statement is your business’s overall reason for being. This shouldn’t highlight a specific product or service, but should instead provide the rai·son d'ê·tre for all your offerings.)

My answer: My café’s goal is to offer simple, nutritious meals to busy workers, students, retirees, and homemakers in a cozy and comfortable environment.

Describe Your Brand Style/Tone. (What feelings will your brand create for its users?)

My answer: Warm, friendly, and comfortable.

What Does Your Business Aspire to Become? (Five or ten years down the line what do you see your restaurant business eventually becoming? Don’t be afraid to dream big! Knowing what you want your business to evolve into will help you come up with a forward-thinking name.)

My answer: Cafés dotting the tri-county area, known for quick and delicious meals served in a charming, comfortable environment.

Value Proposition: (What value/good stuff does your brand add to a crowded market?)

My answer: Delicious ‘home-cooking’ in a quick and friendly atmosphere.

Associated words: (What words reflect your brand?)

My answer: Homey, tasty, comfortable.

Want Personalized Name Ideas for Your Brief?

Analyze Established Brand Names in Your Industry

Knowing your competitors well is never a bad thing, including knowing the thinking and ingenuity behind their names. There are a multitude of cafés dotted all over the US. Analyzing your competitors’ brand names will help you do this and more.

When researching the competition, try to take note of how well these names represent the company they belong to. What meaning do they convey? What is it about the names of the top restaurant cafés in your area that make them special?

Utilizing this knowledge will give you a definitive advantage when it comes to naming your business. Let’s take a look at some favorite cafés in my area, what they do well, and how the name they chose may have helped their café succeed.

Alamode

Alamode is consistently voted the town’s favorite eatery. It’s friendly and cozy, with an Old West flavor. Best of all, the food is as delicious as their name.

Wild Rose Café

The Wild Rose name evokes the small town, working-class folks it serves. Roomy, fast & friendly, they’ll never rush you out the door, but they’ll keep the coffee coming all morning.

Bob Evans

Even though it’s a chain restaurant, and isn’t locally owned, Bob Evans Restaurant is certainly one of my competitors. Their sign and menu are familiar and the food is consistent. There’s an original Bob Evans, who kept it simple by naming his restaurant after himself.

Find Your Brainstorming Group

You’ve created your brand brief and analyzed your competitors. Now is the time to assemble a great naming team. How do you assemble the best naming team for your business? Well, first, choose creative/smart people who have the time to spare and are committed to the process.

The most important thing? Variety.

If ensemble superhero/heist movies have taught us anything, it’s that when people with different perspectives and skill sets work towards a common goal, magic happens. Each member of the team brings something unique to the table, defeating supervillains and pulling off daring heists in the process.

In reality, diverse-minded teams also happen to be really effective at coming up with great ideas. Top business management firm Mckinsey & Company cites a variety of perspectives as one of the essential characteristics of effective brainstorming sessions.

“The power of brainstorming is greatly enhanced by the junction of different perspectives. That doesn’t happen by accident. The best companies include representatives from across the organization, and from suppliers too, in their brainstorming sessions.” -Mckinsey & Co

The takeaway?

Your name brainstorming team ideally shouldn’t be just you, or you + your best friend/business partner who completes your sentences. Ask the marketing intern. Reach out to one of your clients. Bring in people who have different viewpoints to brainstorm with, and the names this eclectic group generates will give you fresh and varied ideas for your brand name.

Need More Perspectives?

What if you and your team are still on the same page about everything?

Or what if you are starting up solo, and don’t have time or energy to corral your family and friends into the same room (or Zoom call)?

If you’re on the hunt for more unique perspectives to supercharge your quest for a great name, try a naming contest.

Naming contests harness the power of the crowd to deliver you a smorgasbord of diverse and inspired creatives focused on one thing: giving you great name ideas for your business. Name ideas that you can either use right away as the name for your brand, or as an inspirational springboard for your own name ideas.

Want to Know More?

Brainstorming

Now that we’ve done the necessary groundwork, it’s time for the fun part: brainstorming name ideas!

Where to start?

Most advice on brainstorming name ideas says to just start writing whatever comes into your head.

We are going to take a different approach.

We are going to brainstorm name ideas using the different business name types as starting points. Instead of starting from scratch, we’ll brainstorm ideas for each popular type of café name one at a time, each its own separate “brainstorming session.”

A few reasons for this:

Constraints can be freeing: Evidence suggests it is helpful to have some constraints when brainstorming , as a narrower focus allows you to go deeper creatively, and come up with more promising ideas.

A variety of variety- We talked earlier about the importance of different perspectives when generating name ideas. Stylistic variety is just as important, as the format of a name affects its sound, tone, and aesthetic. Using this approach ensures you will have diverse options to choose from.

The more you know... - Don’t know about the different name styles? We’ll be going through and explaining each one as we go, so you’ll be able to quickly familiarize yourself.

Ready to dive-in? Let’s get started!

Note: For my café, I’ve come up with 3 name ideas for each type, but feel free to write down as many as stand out to you!

Descriptive Names

Descriptive names give people an idea of what your business does. Some notable examples are Salesforce and TripAdvisor.

My descriptive name ideas:

QuickEats
ComfyCafe
PlainNTasty

Brandable Names

Brandable names are names that are made-up names that contain no dictionary words. Because of their freedom from convention, this type of name is often catchier, shorter, and more brandable than the rest of the name types.

My brandable name ideas:

Crumpers
Wizzles
Bixie’s

Experiential Names

Experiential names are inspired by the experience of using a product or service. Some famous examples include StumbleUpon and Bumble.

My experiential name ideas:

AromaAlley
CozyCorner
YummyTummy

Evocative Names

Evocative names use metaphor and imagery to relate a specific feeling or idea. These names draw not from what a business does, but the experience or positioning the business aspires to achieve. Some famous examples include Red Bull and Honey.

My evocative name ideas:

HearthCountry
BrightSpot
ToastedRose

Expression-Based Names

Expression names are based on common expressions in culture and language. These names are great because they are instantly familiar to people, and easy to recall (because we already know them).

My expression-based name ideas:

SugarNSpice
SweetPea
Mama’sMenu

Gather Up All Your Name Ideas

All the name ideas I came up with during the brainstorming stage:

Crumpers
Wizzles
Bixie’s
AromaAlley
CozyCorner
YummyTummy
HearthCountry
BrightSpot
ToastedRose
SugarNSpice
SweetPea
Mama’sMenu

Need more Ideas?

Do all your names sound the same? Stuck for new ideas? Don’t worry, this is pretty common. Naming your business is an iterative process. It’s not likely that you are going to get the exact right name idea on the first try. Luckily there are some strategies for getting more inspiration.

Rinse and Repeat

Use your current list of names as a springboard for better ideas. From judging your first list of names you will know what words you like or don’t like, and what words sound better and inspire you.

Start a Naming Contest

Still stuck? Get hundreds of high-quality, personalized, and available-to-use name ideas fast with a naming contest from Brand New Name.

Get More Name Ideas

THE CUTTING BOARD

Now that we have a sizable list of name ideas to work with, it is time to start the process of whittling down your list. To do this, we have put together a series of steps. They are intentionally ordered from the most clinical/scientific in nature to the most emotionally involved. Speaking from personal experience, you can get really attached to your name ideas!

Cut the Weakest Links

It’s usually glaringly obvious the first time you analyze your list that some names are simply not right for you. Cut those quickly before their mediocreness kills your vibe.

I feel that these names are my weakest links:

QuickEats - Sounds more like a truck stop than a country café.
AromaAlley - Makes me think we’re just letting customers smell the food.
Wizzles - No. Just no. I mean, would you eat there?

Check Against Best Practices

Now that you’ve cut the blatant duds, use naming best practices as a reference to disqualify more names. You don’t have to get granular with this, just ask yourself the questions below. If the answer to more than one question is no, cut the name.

Is the name simple and memorable?
Is the name easy to read, pronounce, and spell?
Is the name different from competitors?
Does the name convey a relevant meaning?
Is the name broad enough to grow with my brand?

Name ideas I am cutting:

PlainNTasty - It’s a little too plain - and the N could be confusing.
HearthCountry - It’s too much of a mouthful and there’s no hearth.
ToastedRose - Much too close to Wild Rose Café.

Go Back to Your Brief

By now, you should have a list of quality name ideas. However, just because it is a quality name, doesn’t mean it’s the right name for your business. That’s why you should go back to your brand brief, and ask yourself the following questions:

Does the name relate to my value proposition, mission statement, tone, or target market?
Can it also encompass my aspirations?
Does it feel right for my business?

Names that aren’t a good fit for my brand:

Bixie’s - It sounds too much like Bigby’s.
YummyTummy - Sounds too much like a children’s restaurant.
Crumpers - It’s kind of a cool name, but it just doesn’t feel right.

Make a Shortlist:

Now that you’ve gone through the challenging process of cutting your list name ideas down, what you are left with are the finalists. You should LOVE all these names.

Here is my shortlist:

ComfyCafe
CozyCorner
BrightSpot
SugarNSpice
SweetPea
Mama’sMenu

The excitement is surely growing, but it’s time to do something even harder: narrow it down to one name! Here are the final steps we’ll take to do so:

Check if It’s Available

Once you’ve gotten feedback on your names, it's time to find out if the matching domain of your business name is available. I’ve found the best way to avoid heartbreak is to have several names on my shortlist. This is so that in the event that one or more of your name ideas is taken, you still have a few high-quality backups.

Using a domain name registrar like Godaddy is a quick and painless way of checking name availability. Just type your name into the search box, and they will tell you if the matching .com is available.

These names weren’t available to register in my chosen TLDs (Top Level Domains):

Mama’sMenu
SweetPea

I’ve done the work, and now have four viable name ideas that make me even more excited to launch my restaurant.

Get Feedback

Take the time to gather more feedback on your restaurant business name finalists. When getting final opinions on a business name, I’ve learned that it’s best to ask either potential clients or people who work in that field - this is your target audience after all. If you can’t find anyone like this, trusted friends and family will do in a pinch.

My feedback:

ComfyCafe - Too generic and bland

BrightSpot - Sounds too harsh and modern.

Because of the feedback, I decided to take the following names out of the running:

ComfyCafe

BrightSpot

Make Your Final Choice:

There are only two names left on my shortlist:

CozyCorner

SugarNSpice

If you have made it to this stage, you probably have two or three names left to choose from. But there can only be one in the end! It’s time to choose your business name. Our advice is to go with your gut and choose the one you absolutely love.

The name I really love, and the winning name idea for my restaurant is: