Restaurant Name Generator
Discover names for your restaurant business using this restaurant name generator
Libby A.
Naming & Branding Expert
Table of Contents
The Ultimate 8-Step Guide To Naming a Restaurant
The day is finally here, you are ready to start working on your new restaurant – but wait – you still need to come up with a catchy restaurant name to stand out from the crowd. If coming up with good restaurant names is making you lose sleep, we got you covered.
My name is Libby, and I am a brand expert. In this step by step guide I will guide you through the naming process.
Not only that, I will also share 7 things you should avoid while choosing name for your restaurant business.
Step 0 – Make a list of at least 20 restaurant names
All you need to do to get the creative juices flowing is to make a list of 20 restaurant names that fit the theme of your restaurant. Put pen to paper and write down whatever pops into your head. You can also use a restaurant name generator for some inspiration. Here are my 20 names:
- Tasty Tavern
- Aramis
- Liquor Land
- Backyard Barbeque
- The Yellow Pepper
- Dino’s Diner
- The Smiths
- WeirDough
- Noir
- Su Casa
- Dark Horse
- Bistro21
- The Hungry Goat
- Café Chocolat
- Trofí
- Have A Wild Thyme
- Pizza Palace
- Côte d’Azur
- Eggcelent Breakfasts and More
- Café Leo
Step 1: Outline What the Name Should Represent
When trying to come up with good restaurant name ideas, it’s important that you first think of them in relation to your brand.
What is in a restaurant name? A lot is in a name, but what really stands out in any name is what it represents. It is what your restaurant name ultimately stands for. You want the name to explain to the target audience who you are and how your services can be of use. That will make the business easier to find and more appealing to potential users.
At this stage of your naming process, here is a list of questions you can ask yourself and the people around you to figure out what exactly your restaurant represents.
- Does my restaurant name idea convey my cuisine and restaurant style?
- Is this a unique and catchy restaurant name?
- Will my customers be able to pronounce this name?
Bottom line: There is no magic formula for explaining what your restaurant represents. What’s important is to identify your target market and then focus on making positive and meaningful emotional connections with them. Find names that cannot in any way jeopardize that objective.
Step 2: Competitive Analysis
Your task in this step is to analyze local or international companies from same field and figure out what inspired their business name ideas. Then you can come up with strategies to do it better.
The big question is, “how exactly did they get their naming on point?”
An easy way to do this is to find a number of creative restaurants names on the internet, evaluate their logo and positioning. This will tell you a lot about how each one derived its name and established a brand.
An exhaustive competitive analysis will give you an objective understanding of the competition’s strengths and weaknesses. That information will help you position your unique restaurant name in a way that outshines the competition.
How to Do a Competitive Name Analysis
How do you analyze competitors’ restaurant names and logo designs? Follow our simple template:
- Pick a few competitors (preferably industry leaders).
- Check out their name. What does the name say, and how does it relate to what they do?
- Analyze the logo. What does it represent?
- How do their name and logo contribute to their success?
To give you an idea of what we mean, please check out our analysis of these businesses:
Tequila Mockingbird – A great spin on the classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird, this Mexican restaurant in Maryland is sure to turn heads and grab eyeballs
Global Fusion – A famous restaurant chain in Mumbai, this restaurant boasts a wide array of cuisines from all around the world
Dinner in the Sky – Spread over 45 countries, this restaurant gives its patrons a unique one-of-a-kind experience of dining while being suspended in the air
Greem Café – Named after a Korean word that means cartoon, this unique café in Seoul is designed to look like a 2D black and white drawing
Bottom line: You can tell from the four examples that it’s by no coincidence that some good restaurant business name become so relatable and memorable. The feel in the logo and the messaging in the name help the business stand out from the crowd.
Step 3: Gather a List of Your Business Name Ideas (Brainstorm)
The next step for you is to brainstorm possible restaurant names ideas. Write them down as they come; do the weeding later.
When you have 20-40 business names that fit your niche and vision, and that can compete successfully with existing competitors.
Next, split your list of names into the 4 categories listed below. Let’s see a quick demonstration assuming you’re trying to come up with creative restaurants name.
- Descriptive names: In this approach, the name should describe the service or product of your business at first glance.
Here are 5 descriptive names we brainstormed for the purpose of this article:- Liquor Land
- Café Chocolat
- Backyard Barbeque
- Bistro21
- Pizza Palace
- Suggestive names: Suggestive names create a vivid image that resonates with the prospective user. Suggestive restaurant names hint at an underlying meaning to the name, instead of just putting it out there. You can go with this category if you’re trying to get creative.
Good examples for suggestive names are:- The Hungry Goat
- WeirDough
- Have A Wild Thyme
- Eggcelent Breakfasts and More
- The Yellow Pepper
- Abstract names: Abstract names are memorable and catchy, but they don’t have any apparent connection with their services or products. The names are purely made up, so they easily establish dominance in the market. Google, Yahoo, Nike, and Skype are examples of abstract names.
Some abstract name ideas for restaurant business are;- Aramis
- Noir
- Trofí
- The Smiths
- Su Casa
- Legacy names: naming your restaurant with legacy in mind means that you want it to outlive you. If this is what you prefer, you can just name it after yourself or an organization you founded. The luxury sports car Ferrari, for example, is named after its founder, Enzo Ferrari.
We brainstormed these examples:- Tasty Tavern
- Dino’s Diner
- Dark Horse
- Côte d’Azur
- Café Leo
Step 4: Generating Names
Are you still stuck on a good restaurant name to go with? Try our restaurant name generator.
This name generator will get you name ideas using AI algorithm match. It’s unique, it’s fresh and it was made for you.
All you have to do is type your word you want to include in the name in the search bar. In a matter of seconds, you will get restaurant names ideas.
Our algorithm is designed to learn your preferred keywords over time and consequently recommend the most suitable options for you. Learn more how does it work, by clicking here.
Once you find the names you like, instant domain zone availability checker will show you what zones are available for registration. This AI based restaurant name generator will also get you some logo recommendations based on the name of your restaurant. This tool saves you a lot of time and the best part? It is totally free!
Ready to find your business name?
Step 5: Shortlisting your name ideas
It’s weeding time! This is where you prune and pick only the best names for your restaurant. Your shortlist should have about 3-5 names off your initial list.
Picking your favorite unique restaurant name may be tough, especially if you used our restaurant name generator. There are a few things you need to consider when creating a shortlist.
- Keep it simple. Good restaurant names should be unique, but mostly simple. Simple names are easily remembered.
- Check for linguistics and context. Do a quick google search of your names to find out what they mean in other languages- especially your target countries. If any of them has an offensive meaning in another language, it’s best to go with a different name.
- Sometimes owners choose names that later become controversial especially in overseas markets. Don’t make that mistake. Eliminate any chances of the name being misinterpreted as sexist, homophobic, racist, or offensive in any way to any community.
- Tagline check. If you haven’t come up with a tagline at this point, take a pause and do that. It’s important that your chosen restaurant name aligns with your tagline, which is also your slogan.
It is your prerogative to decide the elimination criteria, but this checklist should help you shorten your list:
- Is the name culturally sensitive?
- Does the name capture the values and vision of your brand?
- Does the name align with your tagline? If you don’t have a tagline ready, you need to create it at this point and align it with your preferred app name.
- How relatable is the name to the target audience?
- Of the most relatable names, which ones are the easiest to remember?
- Can your target audience pronounce the name easily and accurately?
- How original does the name sound? You don’t want clichés and plagiarized names.
Reduce your list from the original 20-40 names to about 3-5 names.
From the list of 20 restaurant names I`ve shared on Stage 0 of this guide, here are my top 4 picks that I love most and why the name caught your eye.
- WeirDough – Food puns will always grab attention, and this play on the word Weirdo is a great name for a bakery or a restaurant that specializes in baked goods
- Backyard Barbeque – A straightforward restaurant name idea that immediately tells the customer what your restaurant is about
- Côte d’Azur – The French word for the French Riviera is a great abstract and unique restaurant name for a fine dining ambiance and French cuisine
- The Yellow Pepper – A catchy restaurant name, this name will keep your customers hooked and intrigued about your menu
Step 6: Background Check
Once you have shortlisted the best restaurant names, background checks are necessary. A background check might just save you from future legal battles and cases of misinterpretation. Here are a few things to do in a background check.
- Research Legality: You do not want to get in trouble with the law because you’re starting a restaurant business. So, find out if your intended restaurant names and taglines are in accordance with the law of your home country. Do this for each name on the shortlist. If any of them does not pass the test, drop that name and move on with the others.
- Trademark Check: to avoid cases of trademark infringement down the line, find out if your restaurant name or logo is already trademarked by another organization. If it’s not, you have the go-ahead to register it as your own trademark.
- Readability: Are your restaurant name ideas easy to read and understand? You can get an external opinion on the readability of your restaurant name and tagline. If it’s not, you have the opportunity to fix that because you’re not creating it for yourself alone.
Step 7: Get some Feedback
You have narrowed down your 20-40 name list to 2-3 names at this point.
Simple step: It’s great to have the opinion of a third-party when you’re done with the primary checks. Their opinion may differ from yours, but it’s mostly objective criticism so that’s okay. You can show a list of your final 2 club names to;
- People who run or own a restaurant.
- Your target audience.
If you’re asking your ideal audience, ask the first thing they thought of on hearing that name. Ask a restaurant owner how they think an audience would interpret your name ideas.
Once you get feedback, go back and figure out if their response was in favor of your restaurant name or not. Ask yourself if the name evoked the thoughts, you had imagined it would.
Pro Step: If you want to go deeper with the feedback step you can reach out to opinion shapers, industry leaders, your ideal customers, linguists, and tech futurists for their opinions.
- Tech futurists will help you predict and reshape the future prospects of your new restaurant name within the global tech space.
- Linguists will advise on the name’s readability and lingual appropriateness.
- Opinion shapers and industry leaders will help you predict the restaurant’s probable reception in the real world.
- Ideal customers will tell you whether the business name represents a need they would purchase.
Pro tip: Don’t rely too much on feedback from biased people, especially fans, friends, family members, and colleagues. Seek the opinion of brutally honest critics.
Step 8: Check if the name is available
You have come a long way in trying to name your restaurant. Now, the final step is to check if your name and extension of choice are available for domain registration. You can use our name availability checker to run a quick check after you have generated name ideas for your restaurant. Our free tool shows you which domain extensions are available, and will recommend logo ideas that correspond with your business name. Or you can Google the shortlisted names to ensure that they aren’t plagiarized. Looking up the names will also give you an idea of what each name might mean to different internet users.
The restaurant name generator and availability checker are highly recommended, to make your restaurant stand out from the rest.
Ready to find your business name?
7 Things to Avoid While Naming your Restaurant
- Complex Names. In a bid to come off as creative or different, a lot of people come up with names they shouldn’t be using for a restaurant names or any establishment at all. You can get creative, but don’t complicate things for yourself and your audience by using names that are difficult to read and spell.
- Copying a Competitor’s Style. The competitive analysis is for you to study the marketplace, and get inspired with ideas that are original to your brand. Copying the style, name or logo of another restaurant takes away the originality from your project.
- Skipping Background Checks. Do not for any reason, skip the background checks detailed in Step 6. That is, if you hate the discomfort of legal battles and run-ins with the law enforcement.
- Shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to success. Even when naming your restaurant, you have to follow through with the recommended steps. Cutting corners may cost you more in the long run.
- Don’t limit the name to a specific language or geographical location. That will in most cases minimize the future growth prospects.
- Don’t use words that are too plain or cliché to outstand from a crowd. In the same breath, don’t choose names that too obscure, technical, or difficult.
- Don’t be too stubborn or biased that you cannot accept negative feedback for the names you like.
To save time, you can use our restaurant names generator to quickly find good club names. Name ideas from the name generator are catchy, simple and unique to you.
