Restaurant logo maker

From across the street to a phone screen

A restaurant logo works harder than most. It has to read on your sign from across the street, at night, through a car window. Then it shrinks to a small tile in a delivery app, in a long list of places to eat. In between, it goes on menus, takeout bags, gift cards and the chest of a staff apron.

Those places pull in different directions. The sign wants the name big and plain. The app tile is square and tiny, so a long name turns to mush there. The apron is embroidered: thread, a handful of colors, no fine lines. And the receipt printer by the register has one ink, usually black.

So before you settle on a design, picture the two extremes: your sign and that tile. A logo that survives both will cope with everything in between.

Your dish says more than a fork and knife

The usual restaurant symbols are a chef's hat, a crossed fork and knife, and a plate with steam rising off it. Nothing's wrong with them, except that everyone has them. A fork and knife tells people you serve food, which they'd guessed from the tables.

The dish you're known for says far more. A taco or a bowl of ramen, drawn your way, tells a passer-by what's for dinner. Byte Burger, one of our AI examples, is a burger in sunglasses drawn in chunky pixels like an old video game, so you get the food and the attitude at once. Groovy Greens, another, is a winking salad bowl with daisies over swirly seventies lettering. Neither needs explaining.

Mood matters as much as subject, so match the logo to your prices and your room. A cartoon mascot, like the ninja holding a sushi roll in our Sushi Ninja example, suits a counter where kids point at the menu board. Above white tablecloths it would feel off. A quieter place does better with less: Olive & Thyme is an olive branch in a gold circle over a green script name, calm and a little formal.

We'd go further. Plenty of sit-down restaurants don't need a symbol at all. A well-set name ages better than a drawing of a dish you might take off the menu next spring.

Long names, cuisines and family names

Restaurant names collect extra words: Kitchen, Bistro, Taqueria, Bar & Grill. Give the name two levels. The part people say goes big, and the descriptor sits on a smaller line underneath, the way “Mediterranean Kitchen” sits under Olive & Thyme. In our templates and the AI generator, that line goes in the slogan field.

A family name like Rossi's makes a fine logo on its own, if the apostrophe survives at small sizes. Leave out the street and the founding year unless they're part of the story: each makes the logo wider and the app tile harder to read.

Lettering sets the tone before anyone reads a word. A chunky slab serif, with thick square feet on every letter, feels like a diner; a fine script feels like a wine list. Our guide to logo fonts covers the main kinds.

Building yours from a template or the AI

The templates on this page already carry your name. Pick one for its layout and symbol, since colors are the easiest part to change. The editor lets you retype the text, swap fonts and colors, adjust the spacing, and move, resize or recolor any part. What it can't do is redraw a symbol. If none fits, look through all our logo templates by keyword: “noodles”, say, or “pizza”. You can edit without an account or a card, and nothing is charged until you download.

Or let our AI logo generator design something new. The one above starts out set to Restaurant, so describe your signature dish under “What should it show?” and pick a style. Our Taco Fiesta example is a Retro 3D wordmark, golden letters with thick orange-and-brown sides and no symbol, and it would look good over a door. Like the smiling clay cup of Bubble Tea Co, though, it depends on light and shadow, so plan a flat logo beside either one for aprons and receipts. You'll find all the depth styles on our 3D logo maker page.

Check it before you download

• Zoom out until your logo is as small as an app icon. If the symbol turns into a blob, plan a version with the symbol or your initials alone.
• Picture it printed in black only. That's how your receipt and your rubber stamp will show it, so a logo that depends on shading needs a flat version.
• Try it against something dark, like a black menu board or a lit sign at night. The editor's background color and the generator's preview backgrounds make that easy.
• Read it on your phone at arm's length, the way someone scrolling past would.

After you download, our free logo checker runs these tests on the real files: it shows your logo as a favicon and an app icon, in one color and on light and dark backgrounds. Before you order signs or print menus, check your country's trademark register too.