Uniting The Vision
Restaurant Branding
Through strategy-first restaurant branding, concept development and design expertise we unite teams under a shared vision, purpose and future.
From full-service to quick-serve, food trucks to food halls, Vigor helps companies craft unforgettable experiences. Restaurant branding expertise has been at our core for over 18 years. Through our proprietary brand concept development process, Vigor helps to clearly define a brand’s purpose, providing a firm foundation to better unite teams, partners, and stakeholders. That unity creates an environment where every touchpoint, nuance, and facet of the restaurant’s brand is built with the utmost consideration. The result is an enriched brand experience worth remembering.
At Vigor, branding is about more than aesthetics. It’s a strategy-driven endeavor that begets best-in-class brands that quickly gain momentum in the market.
Explore Our Restaurant Branding Services
Restaurant Branding Thought Leadership
Restaurant branding trends and hot topics
The Vigor team has established themselves as experts in the restaurant industry, specifically in the niche of branding and brand strategy. We write for well-known publications, serve as subject matter experts for journalists, and serve up our thinking here on our website. Here are some of the latest branding articles.
Clearing up the murkiness surrounding Brand Purpose
Brand Purpose quickly established itself as the buzzword du jour in the 2010s with renowned, respected consultancies like Brighthouse, a BCG Company, and iconic thinkers like Simon Sinek dominating the
How to create an on-brand restaurant interior design
Creating an interior design that reflects a restaurant’s personality traits is crucial to its success. It creates visual consistency from what consumers are discovering online and in advertising, and in
Successful Restaurant Marketing In 10 Easy Steps
After approximately 20 years of being involved in every aspect of the restaurant business from serving to being a one-person marketing department, I’ve seen first hand what successful restaurant marketing
Restaurant Branding Benefits
Benefits of restaurant branding with Vigor
01
Optimized Budget Investment
By clearly defining the restaurant’s direction and brand principles, budgets and investments are optimized across every partner involved in the life-cycle.
02
Makes innovation comfortable
Why emulate what’s already been done? Our focus on purpose paves the way for more innovative restaurant brand concepts and experiences that are tailored to your business.
03
Fast-tracks Loyalty Building
By focusing on a core consumer group and designing restaurant brand experiences designed to attract them, the journey towards consumer loyalty is quicker.
04
Increases Company Valuation
Whether selling the brand or property or growing into a franchised system, strong brands command higher valuations from investment partners.
Restaurant Branding Faqs
Common restaurant branding questions answered
As you can imagine, we get a lot of questions about restaurant branding and design. We’ve gathered the most frequently asked questions and answered them here so you can learn a bit more and possibly get answers before having to ask. Of course, we’re happy to have discussions and answer questions.
The answer depends on your definition of success. If your aim is to grow your business into multi-unit, franchising, or something larger, then branding is absolutely critical. If you’re a single unit with no plans of growth beyond revenue, then branding is overkill.
In the instance of a single unit restaurant with no growth plans, an identity design based on a creative brief is a much better investment of time and budget. You’ll end up with a beautiful look and feel to the restaurant at a lower cost.
Restaurant branding is critical to the success of any restaurant company that seeks to achieve any of the following:
- Grow into a multi-unit footprint
- Create a collection of multiple restaurant concepts under an umbrella brand or in the same property (e.g. hotels, food halls)
- Build a restaurant concept into a franchised model
- Break-through the status quo with innovation-driven and/or purpose-driven concepts
Realizing success in restaurant branding initiatives can look different depending on the goals of the company. For some, it’s the speed in which loyalty is built. For others, it’s how much equity is built with having that brand in place. The key to realizing success is in establishing what success looks like from the very beginning, and how that success will be measured.
At Vigor, we invest the time at the beginning of the restaurant branding process to discuss what success looks like from multiple fronts. Concurrently, we discuss how that will be measured and when.
There are multiple ways to measure success. Some include monetary gains, polling consumers to gauge sentiment and understanding of the brand, interviewing employees, and conducting an actual valuation after the brand has had time to take hold.
We’ve heard so many varying definitions of “branding” over the years, and a lot of times they’re incorrect. Restaurant branding is a strategic endeavor first and foremost. Initially, it has very little to do with visual outputs. Brand strategy is the key to any branding initiative, and it’s usually the one that gets brushed aside or lightly touched. The strategy is the engine that drives design, from interiors through identity, as well as operations, culinary, human resources, and leadership. Without a strategy, it is not “restaurant branding.” It’s identity design.
This is a tough question to answer because there are so many contributing factors to why restaurants fail or succeed. However, from our experience, rare is the case that branding will save a failing concept. Instead, we advise clients to invest in strong restaurant marketing strategies and activation.
Where restaurant branding can save a failing concept is in a few situations:
- The restaurant has received severely negative press and publicity
- A change in ownership, format, and/or offering