The food retail industry is projected to rake in a staggering 5.75 trillion dollars this year. As global populations continue to balloon, that number will keep trending upwards.

All of that opportunity in the food niche has inspired many entrepreneurs to enter the fray by opening restaurants, creating private-label goods for grocery store distribution and more.

Whether you’re in that camp of new “food-preneurs” or you’ve been in the game for a while, you’re going to need a strong logo to make an impact in a market that’s becoming increasingly crowded. Our write-up below shares some tips that can help you craft a food logo that your customers will find mouth-watering!

1. Incorporate Your Signature Item

Does your food brand have a signature item? If it does, making that item a focal point of your logo’s design is a great idea.

In a perfect world, your logo will communicate with customers in an instant who you are and what you do. If you’re a food brand that sells burgers, having a burger in your logo immediately achieves those ends.

To be clear, logos don’t need to be that obvious for your brand to be successful. Look no further than an apple being “Apple’s” logo for their computer products. We will say though that clarity is usually the best foundation to build your logo on.

2. Think About What Makes Your Brand Special

Maybe having a burger as the logo for your burger brand is too obvious for your taste and you’re looking to do something that’s more unique. We think that’s a great idea!

That aspiration begs the question: What makes you unique?

Are your burgers vegan? Are your salads constructed from veggies that were sourced from fair-trade farmers?

If there’s something special about your food brand that people would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, featuring that unique tidbit in your design can help your logo pop.

3. Color Means a Lot to Food Logos

Color can have a psychological effect on humans. As a food retailer, what’s the psychological effect that you’d like to have on prospective customers that see your logo?

If making money is important to you, hunger should be at the top of your list.

To that end, make sure that the colors you use in your logo are appetizing. Brown and green aren’t going to make people want to eat. Yellow and red, on the other hand, can really work in your favor.

4. Don’t Think About Color Until You Love Your Logo in Black & White

Yes. Color is essential when it comes to effective food logo design. The problem is that people get so fixated on color when they’re conceptualizing their logo that they forget to spend enough time ensuring that their logo’s base is excellent.

The base of your logo (its black and white sketch) should be visually appealing and communicative. Once you can confirm that it’s both of those things, you can start using color to plus it out.

If you lead your logo’s design with color and not with a strong art foundation, your logo is going to be mediocre.

5. Have a Look at Your Competition

There are thousands of players in the food space that are wildly successful. All of them have logos. Take a look at the big players in your food niche to see if you can find commonalities in the logos that they use.

What do those companies do that you like? What can you do differently to stand out?

A little bit of competitive research can go a long way when it comes to avoiding mistakes and increasing your odds of stumbling onto a great idea.

6. Think About Versatility

Your food logo is going to be present in almost every piece of marketing collateral that you present to the world. Does it have the versatility that it needs to look great in all of those places?

For example, a giant hotdog might look great on a rectangular billboard. How would it look in a square Instagram post though?

What about when you get into food packaging design? Will your logo look great on a food box/bag?

Think hard about how your logo will be leveraged over the lifespan of your business. Choose a final design that you predict will be easy to work with.

7. Consult With Your Customers

Your company and all of its branding pieces exist for one purpose: to sell things to your customers. Therefore, it stands to reason that you should source feedback from your customers to make sure that your logo is having the effect that you want it to have.

If you already have a customer base, create a few logo designs and ask for their feedback. Figure out which design they like best and leverage their suggestions to make that design even better.

Don’t have a customer base yet? No problem!

Figure out who your target customer is, put together a focus group and get that group’s feedback on your designs.

Getting feedback from the group that matters most to your company’s success is an excellent way to help refine your design quickly and come away with a final food logo that really works.

Finishing Up Our Tasty Food Logo Tips

Creating a good food logo isn’t dissimilar to creating a great logo for any kind of business. There are though, a few special considerations that coincide with food that are worth leaning on to make your logo truly mouthwatering!

We hope that our tips have helped you move closer to your ultimate logo and we invite you to use our free logo making tools if you’d like to start drafting up some designs!