Finding a perfect name can be one of the most frustrating steps of opening a craft brewery. More often than not, that perfect name, the one you’ve been dreaming of, rolling over your tongue and telling friends and family about ever since tasting your first batch of homebrew, has already been taken by some small outfit in the middle of nowhere. Damn.
How is this possible?
Grab a beer, and let’s talk. A while back, we wrote about what goes into a good craft brewery name — things like availability and ownability — big ideas that were reflective of your biggest differentiators. But in that article, we glossed over how to actually get from an initial concept to a final, trademarkable name itself. So, let’s look at some of the thinking and processes that go into finding an original, ownable name in an era of more than 3,000 craft breweries.
So we’re not so abstract here, let’s make up a fun example: You and your partners are all into old motorcycles and have found a perfect brewery location in an old auto shop. You’re opening a small brewpub that focuses on session beers. Brewing session beers isn’t novel, but your cool location and the start of a deeper theme and culture surrounding motorcycles gives us some fun stuff to work with. Using this hypothetical brewery-in-planning as an example, let’s dig in and look at what “buckets” we can explore to find a great brewery name. In no order of importance, let’s explore the following concepts:
Your town’s history
This in and of itself can be a strong concept, so long as another brewery doesn’t open up down the street with a similar story. Was your town supported by a big industry? Was it a frontier town? Who lived/lives there? Is there a landmark (river, statue, building, battle ground, big ball of twine, etc.)? What’s the story behind your town’s name? Since we don’t know where this town is, let’s instead focus on the brewery location itself. An old auto shop dovetails nicely with the motorcycle theme and can already give us an approachable, blue collar vibe.
Quick words/ideas: shop, service center, pit stop, station, tool box, gear box, wrecker, repair, monkey wrench, wrench money, shade tree mechanic, knuckle buster, OEM
Your beer itself
Sessionable, easy going beers evoke names and words that are calming and non threatening. The ultimate goal is to combine ideas that smartly reflect your core messaging, but you don’t need to worry about that at this phase. For now, you’re trying to get out as many related ideas as possible. But, if you can start making connections between ideas at this point, more power to you!
Quick words/ideas: small, light, easy going (easy rider), quaffable, training wheels, on-ramp, starter, converter, spark, water, crisp, “like making love in a canoe”
Motorcycles
Now let’s look at your main differentiator — your group’s love of motorcycles. Let’s start concretely by breaking down the gear and different things that go into the subject. Types of motors. Bike part and components. Type of motorcycles. Historic bikes. Motorcycle clubs (maybe good for creating a brewery culture, but could also be bad due to recent events, or worse, trite — see note at end of article on cultural implications). Tools and mechanic gear.
Maybe we can explore motorcycle lingo and slang? Quick words/ideas: bone shaker, steel horse, colors, rocker, 1 percenter (fun tie in with ABV and session beers), weekend warrior, ape hangers, two-stroke, clutch, OEM, belt drive, big twin, big block, boneyard, brain bucket, bronson rock, canyon carving, chain, valve, cog, chaps (woo hoo!), cut, crash bar, drag bars, flat head, flywheel, gearbox, inline 6, ink, iron butt, iron head, lane splitting, monkey wrench, nomad, organ donor, shovel head
In a real project, we would repeat this exercise several times, gathering thousands of words and concepts. The goal is to get a lot of raw material to work with so we can whittle down to the very best. Skipping ahead, let’s either take some of these words wholesale, or combine them with other concepts to see what we can come up with.
Pull some cool bike words from the batch we came up with above. Trust your gut on these and grab anything that sounds cool and feels right: bone shaker, canyon carver, bronson rock, big block, cHOP shop (eh?), flywheel, clutch, iron head, monkey wrench, nomad
Session + Bikes. Maybe something along the lines of a starter bike: 250 club, 250 CC, 2 banger, 2 stroke, low rocker, easy rider, 1 percenter, glide, Sunday rider, fair weather rider, training wheels, sissy bars, tassels (woo hoo!)
Google these words in conjunction with industry terms. Example: “Bone Shaker” + “brewing” “beer” “alcohol” “food” “wine,” etc. You want so make sure, at this step, that you’re clear from competing names.
Now here’s where the frustrating part happens. “Bone Shaker” immediately shows as a beer name and a bar. Damn. There’s a Carver Brewing Co. And there are several breweries with Canyon as a part of their name (not a complete deal breaker, but it’s not 100 percent differentiated and ownable, either). Surprisingly, there’s a “Bronson Rock” bar. Big Block, Flywheel, Iron Head, Monkey Wrench and Nomad are all either beer or brewery names. “Clutch” is a New Belgium Brewing Co. beer. “2 Banger” might be too similar to Banger Brewing, and 2 Stroke is a beer by Motorworks Brewing (great name!)
(Click “Next” to continue reading the story.)
“250” brings up a Keurig Coffee Brewing System. That could be a problem since they’re in the food and beverage industry (coffee “brewing” no less) and have deep pockets (regarding a potential cease and desist). However, I would feel comfortable presenting “250 Club” as an option. And while I’m not good at math, another option to explore could be to figure out the cubic inch measurement of something to reference an engine size (maybe the homebrew system you learned on) and use that for a fun name with a story.
Low Rocker only brings up one similar brewery name. This one may warrant exploring, assuming your team likes it.
And finally, the most compelling concept surrounds the 1 percenter moniker (biker slang for gang members). We could spin this into 5 Percenter Brewing Co., a nod to your focus on session beers.
And that’s why this process can be so frustrating. Granted, we tooled through these ideas quickly, we only generated three or four possible options. Every time we name a brewery, there are several names that are absolutely perfect — except they’re already taken — but that’s OK. Go back to your concept and don’t be afraid to scrap what you’ve developed and start over. Maybe even give it a few days and come back fresh.
After all that, let’s say “5 Percenter Brewing Co.” is the winner. Everyone on your team loves it, and it’s preliminarily available. After your lawyer gives us the official go-ahead, the next step is to immediately buy the domain name and claim any social media channels(Twitter, Facebook, Untapped, Instagram, Christian Mingle, etc.) before heading into the identity design process.
Brainstorming tools
Some tools we like to use are lateral thinking (approaching problems in a nonlinear, non-traditional way), word clouds, thesaurus/dictionary, and of course, Google. Great places to find unique, cool names are in slang and language surrounding some element of your differentiator.
On clichés
At this point, it’s unlikely you’ll find an available cliché or otherwise, boring name. However, if you stumble upon one, don’t settle just because it’s not taken. Just because you can’t find the “perfect” name doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy with what you end up with. You’re going to be living with it for a while, get it right now.
Lawyer up
We always make sure our name options pass the cursory Google test before sharing them with a client. But the final go ahead has to come from an attorney. It doesn’t have to be a trademark attorney, though that helps. It just needs to be someone with more legal knowledge than your team or ours. This can add a week or so to the process, and some more cash, but can save thousands of dollars and heartache down the line.
Craft Brewing Business featured a fantastic series on trademarking names a while back. Read the entire thing to see why that half of this process is just as important as what we just covered.
Cultural implications
We touched on this in our first naming article, but it bears repeating. You need to make sure your name doesn’t have any negative connotations. This isn’t to be bland, but rather, so you garner press for the correct reasons and attract the right people.
Our small motorcycle-centric brewpub was of course, made up. But if it were real, we would need to be careful how closely our name referenced driving (an overzealous person might suggest you’re promoting drinking and driving). And the motorcycle club / gang stuff walks a fine line. This can add some time and cash to the process but can save thousands of dollars and heartache down the line.
In this case, “5 Percenter” was too good to pass up. This is where positioning and branding come into play to shape the messaging.
Hire a professional
And finally, this process is hard. If you’re struggling through it, reach out to us, we’d love to help.
This column was provided by the folks at CODO Design, a five-man branding firm based in Indianapolis, IN. They’ve spent years working with startup craft breweries on naming, branding and positioning, responsive web design, and package design. They’ve gathered their experience into a comprehensive Craft Beer Branding Guide to help startup breweries navigate the entire branding process. Check it out at www.craftbeerbrandingguide.com.
