Restaurant Logo: 6 Clever Ideas for an Awesome Restaurant Logo

If you own a restaurant, food truck, or takeout joint, you need a memorable logo. No matter how delicious your offerings, culinary arts will only get you so far in today’s saturated restaurant market. To make a lasting impression, your brand’s image and presentation have to match the quality of your food. 

Building a successful restaurant brand starts with designing a beautiful logo. After all, the iconic design of, for example, McDonald’s golden arches has contributed massively to the fast-food chain’s success over the years. Your restaurant is no different. If you can create a timeless brand image, your customers are more likely to return for more. 

The good news is that creating a restaurant logo doesn’t have to be a pain. Sometimes even the simplest restaurant logos can achieve the best results. To help steer you in the right direction for your design, we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite restaurant logo designs. 

Our Top 6 Restaurant Logos for Restaurants and Restaurateurs 

Opening a restaurant isn’t for the faint of heart. After all, a CNBC report found that 80% of U.S. restaurants fail before they reach their fifth anniversary. To help stay afloat in today’s hyper-competitive market, create a winning brand. For inspiration with your logo branding, consider any of these excellent restaurant logos below.

1. Teranga

Teranga is New York City’s ode to African cuisine, and its logo fits the bill to a tee. This playful, colorful wordmark is an excellent choice for a laid-back ethnic restaurant. Since the name of your restaurant must stick in your diners’ minds, we typically recommend a wordmark (like the one below), rather than an abstract logo. 

One of the aspects of the Teranga wordmark we love the most is that the shadowing effect provides a three-dimensional look and feel of the logo. For a spicy food joint, this “pop” effect is suggestive of the flavor found in their dishes. Finding creative ways to tie your wordmark or emblem to the nature of your food is essential for creating a winning restaurant logo.

2. Upland

There’s something to be said for hyper-minimalist logos suiting upscale dining establishments. If you have an urban restaurant that appeals to more upmarket customers, you can’t go wrong with using a barebones logo or wordmark that doesn’t distract anyone’s attention. As a rule, the chicer your restaurant, the more likely you should err on the side of minimalist in your logo. 

The Upland logo is an example of minimalism done well. However, there’s room for improvement. Ideally, we’d like to see a hint of color utilized in one of the letters of their wordmark, simply to help infuse a bit of personality into an otherwise totally nondescript design. Still, it serves its purposes very well as a simple, unassuming black-and-white design.

3. Rosella

Reminiscent of the New Yorker magazine cover font, Rosella is a Manhattan-based sushi restaurant that exudes exotic luxury. A skinny font, which symbolizes elegance and sophistication, is well-utilized in their logo, as is an exotic foreign bird perched over the letter “O”. 

The Rosella logo draws a connection in the viewer’s mind between the exotic plates found inside the restaurant, and the foreign-looking bird found in its logo. Therefore, this is another great example of a restaurant that uses its logo design to hint at what they can expect to find plated on its tables.

4. Wildair

Wildair is a restaurant whose logo, at first, appears more befitting of a national airline carrier than an upscale dining establishment. However, that’s exactly what makes this logo brilliant. The creative use of blue and white 3D coloring makes this logo stand out in the minds of its audience, and almost has a “retro” appearance that makes the logo appear timeless. 

The use of friendly and welcoming navy blue colors makes Wildair an awesome example of restaurant branding. But what makes it even more special is the fact that the restaurant’s name, which refers to the great outdoors, is matched by a deep blue color scheme that mirrors a clear blue sky. Tying the restaurant’s name to its logo with the use of color is a great idea for any restaurateur. 

5. Baby Luc’s

Baby Luc’s Brooklyn-based pizzeria is a case study of how to cater to your niche audience. Located in hipster-dense Brooklyn, Baby Luc’s needed a logo that appealed to the chic and modern sensibilities of their young and affluent clientele. Their bright and bold logo does just that. 

The use of capitalized red lettering on a white background is somewhat reminiscent of the Supreme streetwear brand, which is a favorite among Brooklyn dwellers. Nonetheless, Baby Luc’s is an original logo that goes beyond a simple wordmark by adding in a cute cartoon of a child chef rocking a New York Yankees-emblazoned chef’s hat. Cute touches such as these can single-handedly take a logo from good to great. 

6. Frenchette

Last, we have the elegant and refined logo of Frenchette, a, you guessed it, French eatery catering to upscale clientele. The use of lowercase cursive lettering exudes sophistication, so incorporating this font style is a great idea if that’s the look you’re going for. Beyond that, the underline beneath the wordmark, which appears as if it were drawn on with a marker, adds a personal touch that makes the logo feel more “homey” and less cold and unwelcoming.

We also have to commend their use of soft green in the company’s branding. Since most chic restaurants tend to opt for black-and-white or sepia-toned colors in their brand image, original colorways, such as Frenchette’s, are much more likely to stand out and be committed to memory by passersby. 

Investing in a Restaurant Logo is a Recipe for Success

Unless you moonlight as a professional graphic designer, you should seriously consider leaving your restaurant logo to the experts. Otherwise, you might end up with a generic, unmemorable logo that doesn’t stick—or, even worse, makes them lose their appetite!

Luckily, you can hire professional restaurant website designers to take care of all your branding needs. This way, you can focus on your culinary art while leaving the digital art to our expert team of designers.