The restaurant sector is all about the experience. How great an experience you can provide to your customers is the core foundation of your whole business. There can be thousands of restaurants in your city, and how you are different from your competitors can only be communicated through proper branding and marketing techniques. Restaurant branding is about the portrayal of your service, values, food, ambiance, pleasure, and quality of service. It requires a great brainstorming of ideas and research and analysis of demographic factors to build a strong branding technique to deliver the expected results. You convince your customers about your individual and unique brand identity so that they chose you over your competitors and pay visits as frequently as they want to. Here we are discussing some crucial branding aspects that you need to follow to create a strong personality for your restaurant. So let us explain our eleven tips for restaurant branding design in detail:
1. Define A Brand Identity Of Your Restaurant:
When you think about the first step, making a clear definition of your brand is the right choice. It is just a personal question for you and your restaurant. There must be some story, how you have come up with the idea of opening a restaurant and how you are practically starting it. So, that story has all the answers for creating your brand’s personality. If you want to get a clearer idea, ask yourself about the kind of identity you see in your restaurant, the future you want to see for your restaurant, and the value you want to add to your customer’s experience. After days of thinking and churning your brain, you can surely clarify your restaurant’s desired brand definition. Also, you should study the market, competitors, customers, and your dream to come closer to the conclusion.
2. Set Mission and Values:
For a better corporate identity, you must set the mission and values of your restaurant. It can help in the construction of your restaurant branding identity more effectively on various platforms. A brand is a more professional term, and it does require all the fundamental aspects in a professional way. Setting a mission for your restaurant gives a goal to your strategies and operations. Values help you to function in a more professional yet social way. These are the things that can eventually promote your restaurant brand on a larger scale. For a longer journey and sustainable growth, you require your mission and definite core values so that your efforts can take a precise shape in your customer’s mind. Without a mission and core values, it is impossible to give direction to your branding decisions and daily operations.
3. Behavioral and Demographic Factors:
Ideally speaking, starting a restaurant and developing a brand involves subjects related to the location and its customers. Before planning and implementing any design, the first thing you need to do is researching and collecting data about your restaurant’s location and expected customers around that area. Every city and every place has a different kind of people, religions, cultures, and set of characteristics. You need to understand how your competitors are working and how your customers are responding to that. Your customer’s choice, preference, education, beliefs, social class, and spending patterns are some of the essential factors that you need to consider before planning a branding design. It should attract and influence your targeted customers and possible customers within the targeted range.
4. Invest In Logo Design and Visual Theme:
Everything related to branding design is incomplete without a great logo. People recognize your brand through the logo because it is the primary identity image of any brand. So when you plan to go for professional branding techniques for your restaurant, you must not take any chance with the logo and graphics. Get a good designer who can create a fantastic logo for your restaurant, supporting all of your designing choices. The eye-catchy logo and graphics take an important place in your restaurant’s theme. Your brand’s logo is a part of your interior, exterior, physical elements, graphic themes, website, and in general, all of your presence. So make sure it is attractive, unique, justifying your image, and creating value to your brand identity.
5. Decide Typography:
Typography is also another essential element of your brand design. Every element you decide and put in your restaurant creates your brand’s persona. So, it means what fonts you want to use and how you want to use them in your restaurant when it comes to typography. From the menu, brochure, visiting cards, to the website and ads, you may want to keep the same typography, which means it should be appropriate for the physical presence and online presence as well. Your customers do not want to get multiple messages to get confused, so the brand’s typography should be adaptive and delivering the ideal brand image. Be it a luxurious or elegant theme or a funny or artistic theme. Ensure your typography also represents the same expression you represent through all of your brandings and design choices.
6. Selection of Color Pallet:
Color psychology is a vital concept for branding and designing. Every color has different emotions and different meanings. One of the essential elements is your design color pallet when you plan your restaurant’s branding designs. Depending upon your customers, you need to decide on suitable colors for your restaurant’s exterior, interior, menu, website, and ads. The theme you want to follow has a significant role in the selection of colors. They should impact positive emotions and optimistically influence your customer’s mind to feel happy with your restaurant’s experience. Dark and gloomy colors are challenging to accept for the restaurant industry, but if you want to use them, make sure you use them wisely in your designs so that they can create positive, cheering, and exciting energies for your customers. Bright and happy colors can always do the magic with some great graphics and design ideas.
7. Build a Strong Website and Digital Marketing:
Your online presence is as significant as your physical presence. The customers can have your restaurant experience and stay connected and updated through your online presence. So when it comes to the online presence, you have to invest in a healthy website and digital marketing strategies. Search engine registration helps you get closer to your customer’s search, and social media marketing helps your brand to grab every possible audience’s attention. Eventually, a brand is your restaurant’s identity with maximum recognition and a broad perception of your audience.
To reach every corner and get closer to your audience, you require a solid website and well-executed digital marketing strategies. The design of your website and social media pages should coordinate with your restaurant branding theme because a visually appealing structure of your website and social media pages is highly required to establish your restaurant’s personality.
8. Focus on Interior and Exterior:
The interior and exterior are the main core elements of your restaurant. They determine the look, image, ambiance, amenities, and experience for your customers. When you are planning branding designs, the primary implementation takes place in your interior and exterior. The structure, layout, colors, furniture, flooring, aesthetics, quality, lightings, placements, and décor combine together to create a perfect interior for your restaurant. Your restaurant is your workplace where you and your staff work efficiently to serve your customers excellent food, ambiance, and service. Your restaurant’s lights, music, and colors reflect your theme of the dining experience. So they must be delightful and pleasant.
The exterior is also equally important. It is your outer shell that creates the first impression to your walk-in customers. So, precise and professional branding designs must focus on the restaurant’s interior and exterior to showcase the brand identity beautifully from the frontline.
9. Design Attractive Physical Elements:
Each physical element in your restaurant represents your brand design. So when you are designing menus, visiting cards, some promotional brochures, and tablewares, consider adding your unique branding element to them. The menu is a significant object to communicate about your restaurant’s brand identity. Because Your menu would always stay in contact with your customers and speak about your restaurant’s core products and specialties. So, make sure you inculcate your professionally designed logo, graphics, color pallet, layout, and typography to make it aligned with your other branding designs. The design, material, quality, and presentation are also some of the crucial aspects of your physical elements.
Everything that your customers use in your restaurant for the dining experience should create your unique brand image in their minds. It would be best if you do not miss any object because they can judge everything and in the end, they want to get the best experience in exchange for their well-spent money.
10. Think about Your Staff’s Appearance:
Every staff member of your restaurant is responsible for your customer’s experience and your restaurant’s service. They are the ultimate people who can decide the future of your business, and that is why you invest a lot of time and energy to select them and train them so that they can carry out your brand value successfully. Your staff’s appearance is another important subject for your designing strategies. Employees working on the front line and are in direct contact with your customer should have an appropriate appearance along with etiquette and predefine personality traits. The uniform they wear, the uniform’s colors, and the way of wearing that uniform are some of the things you need to design smartly. You need to keep in mind the color pallet, logo, graphics, typography, and overall branding theme while designing your staff’s appearance.
11. Presentation and Packaging of Your Food:
One last thing that needs your focus on branding designs is the presentation and packaging of your food. You charge a certain amount for food for the dine-in experience, so make sure you deliver the optimum quality food with an eye-catchy presentation. Your customers set some expectations related to your food’s look and quality based on your interior, exterior, branding strategies, website, and social media pages. If everything is perfect, but your way of presenting your food is not matching your brand image, it can disappoint your customers. It would be best if you design some attractive and unique presentation ideas for your food.
Same for the takeaway and online orders, every material you use for the packaging speaks before your food does. So make sure that packaging is good and materials used for packaging are justifying your brand identity. The packaging material’s quality and designs should not cause misperception in your customer’s mind towards your food and your restaurant’s image.
In older times, visiting a restaurant was just for weekend plans. But now the time has changed and so has people’s lifestyles. It is not a luxury anymore and has become like a normal part of daily life. And that is why for restaurants is has become a need to create a distinctive brand identity and attract customers in multiple ways to sustain and grow in the business. It is a long-term process, and it requires constant attention, investment, and efforts. Everything that is visible to your customer should be an essential part of your overall brand identity. Therefore you must keep everything in sync, from interior to exterior, online to offline marketing, food to table items, and staff to chefs. Everything must follow a particular characteristic to compliment your brand identity in the best way. From the tips as mentioned above, you can easily create your unique and robust restaurant branding design for the extended future.
