So you’re starting up a catering business. Whether you’re launching a brand-new company, or adding a new service to your restaurant, the requirements are the same: people need to know about it, or they won’t be able to try it out.

Marketing is important, of course, but before you even get to that point, there’s a simple and important step that needs to be included as part of your marketing plan: creating a logo. Now, this doesn’t mean you need to have the best or the most perfect logo, but it just needs to represent who you are and your business value, which will grow to become your identity. It doesn’t mean it needs to be final at all – your logo can always be changed or improved later if you want to.

Why Have A Catering Logo to Launch Your Business?

The purpose of a logo, of course, is to create a visual representation of the brand or company. Logos are created for all kinds of businesses, and even for individual products and services.

Catering, meanwhile, is a highly competitive arena. There are some 12,000 caterers operating in the United States. But that doesn’t take into account other businesses that offer catering services, like hotels, food service contractors, and restaurants — for example, there are more than 660,000 restaurants operating in the US alone and many of those offer catering.

Effective logos offer the following traits:

  • Appropriate for the brand. It is recommended that for catering logos, like restaurant logo designers, should pay attention to colors, fonts, and graphics that fit the food industry.

  • Accurate in their messaging. Logos can communicate a lot about the brand, including the brand personality, what the company has to offer, and even who the target audience is. For instance, if your catering company doesn’t offer pizza, you certainly wouldn’t want to include pizza in the logo. It would be misleading.

  • Unique and stand out from the competition. This aspect requires that the graphic designer conducts research to make sure that they’re not creating a piece of design that inadvertently mimics or outright copies an existing logo.

  • Easy to understand and read. Some research suggests that it takes only as little as 1/10th of a second to form a first impression of something we see. And viewers rarely spend more than a few seconds looking at something like a new logo.

It’s important to make sure that your graphic is understandable and your font choice is legible.

What Makes A Logo Effective?

Creating a great logo isn’t just a matter of slapping a small graphic up and putting the company name underneath it. Logos are like any other piece of graphic design: namely, they need to be designed!

And they’re designed for a specific purpose.

Effective logos offer the following traits and should be:

  • Appropriate for the brand. It’s recommended that for catering logos, like restaurant logo designers, they should pay attention to colors, fonts and graphics that fit the food industry.

  • Accurate in their messaging. logos can communicate a lot about the brand, including the brand personality, what the company has to offer, and even who the target audience is. For instance, if your catering company doesn’t offer pizza, you certainly wouldn’t want to include pizza in the logo. It would be misleading!

  • Unique and stand out from the competition. This aspect requires that the graphic designer conducts research to make sure they’re not creating a piece of design that inadvertently mimics or outright copies an existing logo.

  • Easy to understand and read. Some research suggests that it takes only as little as 1/10th of a second to form a first impression of something we see. And viewers rarely spend more than a few seconds looking at something like a new logo. It’s important to make sure that your graphic is understandable and your font choice is legible.

  • Adaptable to different circumstances. Your logo should show up well in limited colours and in black and white. It should also be in vector format, so it can be blown up to different sizes without compromising integrity. Remember that it will likely be used in a number of areas, including marketing materials, on your website, on menus, social media, business cards and more.

All of these aspects combine to make a great logo for your catering company. Now that you know what to look for, how can you create the logo itself?

How To Create A Great Catering Logo

Whether you’re designing the logo yourself, working with another graphic designer, or seeking out assistance from logo design software, there are a few key points that should play into the design process.

  • Be clear on what your business is about and what it offers. Think of your business as if it were a person. What traits would best describe it? What is your target audience? What’s your messaging? What drives your business to start and grow, and what are your goals? All of these factors can make a difference in the finished design.

  • Conduct market research carefully. Uniqueness is one of the main aspects of an effective logo. You don’t want to end up with a logo that looks like it belongs to another company; or one that looks like it’s machine-made. That’s a big consideration in catering logo design, because designers for food services tend to draw from a small pool of inspiration.

  • Make sure that you end up with a professional result. It is easy to tell when a designer doesn’t really know what they’re doing. It’s best to go through several iterations before you launch, rather than have to pull your logo and make element changes after it’s already out in the public eye.

  • Design for growth. This is especially important if you’re starting out. You may only have a few clients now, or offer only a few services, but remember that your goal is to expand. Don’t fixate on graphic design elements that might change later on; for instance, at launch time, you may only offer catering in a small area of your city. But making that a pivotal design element may limit you later on, or require that you redesign your logo before it’s even a year or two old. Think big.

Catering To Your Audience

No matter what your goals are for your new catering business, one of the first should be, “Get a great catering logo.”

That’s the key that will help to brand you to your new audience, tell them about what you offer and what to expect from you, and make your catering business memorable.

Author Bio

Andreas Alanis works as a freelance blogger with a deep understanding of graphic design and brand identity design. He’s keen on educating his readers with information on marketing brands, promotional techniques and digital advertising.