Coming up with a memorable and unique supermarket name is one of the final steps in turning your dream of opening a supermarket into a reality.
But as anyone who’s had kids, owned another business, or adopted an animal knows… choosing the perfect name isn’t always so easy.
In this article, we’ll go over some naming elements and practical strategies to get your creative juices flowing, then go into the legal requirements for registering a name at the state and national levels.
Let’s dive in.
What’s in a name? How much does it really matter?
While an independent supermarket will ultimately be defined by its selection and customer service, it’ll also need to work much harder to stand out from the competition.
A unique and personal name helps your business do just that. With the right name, people will get a sense of who you are and what you offer before they even walk through the doors. A good name also sticks in customers’ minds, bubbling to the surface when it’s time to do their next big shop.
If your name is generic or confusing, it might slip from people’s minds, or they might pass over it instinctively when searching for places to shop. Nobody wants that.
Your supermarket’s name is an important part of your brand and will play a key role in your visual identity and how you market to customers — so make sure your business hits the ground running with a memorable name.
Related Read: 5 Ways To Create a Grocery E-Commerce Site Customers Love
9 Important Tips For Picking a Supermarket Name That Will Stick
While using a business name generator or similar tool is a good way to brainstorm, it’s not likely to result in a supermarket name idea that feels like you.
Here are nine practical tips for creating a supermarket name that will stick with customers.
1. Start With Your Mission and Values
When you created your supermarket business plan, you probably wrote out an executive summary that laid out your vision and mission for the store. This is the perfect starting place for choosing a name.
Look at your specialty, your target customers, and the general feeling you’re trying to create. Then start pulling out important words from that summary. Here are a few example mission statements and some relevant words that could be used in naming:
- An organic grocery store focusing on locally-sourced, organic groceries and healthy food options
- A neighborhood grocery store offering a mix of staples and homemade meals from our specialty deli
- A Hispanic grocery store providing authentic Mexican ingredients and a wide selection of marinated steaks and prepared food
If you haven’t written out your vision for your store, now’s the time. Keeping your core values and mission statement in mind from the beginning will ensure that any name you choose reflects your unique goals and value proposition.
2. Make a Word Bank
Your mission statement isn’t the only thing you can draw on for inspiration. A word bank is a good starting point because it gives you a chance to think about which terms are important to you — and about how you want customers to perceive your business.
Here are some examples to start with:
- Family names
- Nicknames
- Cultural references
- Specialty products (e.g. olives or farm-raised beef)
- Priorities and core values (e.g. family-owned, community)
- Passions
- People and places that are important to you
- Inspirations
At this stage, almost everything is fair game to get the creative juices flowing, but rule out hyper-specific in-jokes or any terms that would require explanation.
You want your supermarket’s name to have a personal touch that’s meaningful to both you and your customers.
3. Look at Similar Businesses for Inspiration
It’s important to come up with a unique name, but that doesn’t mean completely reinventing the wheel. Once you’ve listed out your values and come up with some key words and phrases, search online for grocery stores and supermarkets to get some inspiration.
As you find names that resonate with you, think of these factors and how you might apply them to your own supermarket name:
- How long is the name?
- What does the name make you feel? Does it conjure any images in your mind?
- How does the name work together with the logo?
- Does the name use wordplay or humor to capture your attention?
- What do you assume the business does based on the name alone?
Asking these questions of existing supermarket names will help you think critically when it comes time to decide on your own. In fact, it might be just as helpful to do this exercise with names you don’t like so you can avoid making similar mistakes.
Related Read: Grocery Store SEO: 7 Tips & Tools
4. Keep It Simple
As you start to circle a few names that you like, it’s time to think about how easy they are to use and remember. Choose a business name that someone could spell just by hearing it (and could easily say, just by reading it).
You might think you’re making your brand stand out by taking a common word and spelling it differently, but you might be doing the opposite. Names that are hard to spell will be harder to search for and harder for customers to remember.
Similarly, an overly long name will certainly be unique, but probably hard to remember. That doesn’t mean you have to ditch everything meaningful because it’s hard to say.
Take H-Mart, the popular, nationwide chain of Asian supermarkets. The “H” in H-Mart stands for “han ah reum”, which means “an armful of groceries” in Korean, but it was shortened to H-Mart to make it easier to spell and remember as they expanded.
Create a name that’s memorable while being short and simple.
5. Consider Your Area of Grocery
Next, you’ll also want to consider your target market and the niche of the supermarket you’re in. For instance, an international market or an Asian grocer will use different words to describe themselves than a farm stand or an organic grocery store.
In general, try to use the words that bring out the feelings you want a customer to experience when shopping at your store. Consider a brand name like Sprouts Farmers Market. Even without the “farmers market” at the end of the name, Sprouts still evokes a feeling of freshness and health.
Last, don’t choose a name that puts you into a corner as the business and your offerings grow. For example, a business called “Grant Street Market” won’t make sense if you open a second location that’s not on Grant Street. Similarly, “Manny’s Mini Mart” might create the wrong impression when it opens a much larger location down the line.
Long story short, when you name your business, don’t just think about the next few months — think about where you could be in the future.
6. Take Your Name for a Test Run
So, you’ve come up with a fun, catchy supermarket name idea. Great! But before you formally register it, take it for a test run.
- Share your supermarket name ideas with friends and family to get honest feedback.
- Google it to make sure it doesn’t have any negative associations or meanings you didn’t expect.
- Make sure the name is a good fit for a supermarket – if you tell people the name, what industry do they assume the business is in?
- Consider how your chosen business name might be used in a logo.
If people repeatedly shrug their shoulders or ask a lot of questions about what your name means, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Related Read: 7 Supermarket Marketing Strategies To Implement and Win
7. Make Sure the Name is Available
Once you’ve decided on a name, it’s time to get into the formalities. First things first, determine whether your name is available as a business name, trademark, and online.
- Check your local business registration service, or use services like LLC name search, to make sure no one is doing business under that name in your state.
- If you plan to expand nationally, search the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website to see if the name is trademarked.
- Because having a web presence and online sales are so important for independent supermarkets, check to make sure the domain name for your store’s name isn’t already taken.
- Similarly, you’ll want to check on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to see if the social media handle for your name is available.
While it may be heartbreaking to find a great name only to discover it (or something similar) is already in use, you don’t want to waste time and effort on a brand that will be hard to search for.
Trust us, it’s not worth the hassle. Settle on a name that’s truly unique.
8. Understand How To Register Your Name
Once you’ve settled on a name, it’s time to register it. There are four ways to register your business name, depending on the size of your business.
- Entity name: This registers the name of your business at the state level and prevents anyone else from using it. What entity you register as will depend on your business structure (LLC, S-Corp, etc.).
- Trademark: A trademark protects the name of your business at a national level, which is important if you plan to expand across state lines.
- Doing business as (DBA): A DBA, also known as a “trade name,” is for when you do business under a different name than what’s on your legal paperwork. For example, you may be “Quality Goods Market LLC” on paper, but choose a DBA name that’s location-specific, like “Thornton Quality Goods Market.”
- Domain name: Registering a domain name (a.k.a. your website address) ensures no one else can use it as long as you own it. Note that a domain name does not have to legally match the name of your business, but the closer it is, the easier it is to remember.
At a minimum, you’ll need to register the business name at the state level; however, if you plan to expand to multiple states, you may want to consider registering a trademark. To learn more about registering a business name on the practical level, check out this resource from the SBA.
Related Read: How To Start a Supermarket: 7 Steps for Grocery Entrepreneurs
9. Get Excited!
Last but not least, you should be excited about your new business name! Choosing a name shouldn’t feel clinical or boring. If you’re only concerned about the practical sides of your brand name, you might lose the spark that makes owning a small business worth it.
And if you come up with a name that ticks all the boxes on a practical level but doesn’t sit right in your gut, it’s a sign to keep trying. Don’t settle on a name that doesn’t feel right to you.
Remember, a great supermarket name idea is:
- Personal
- Catchy
- Evocative
If a name doesn’t come to you right away, don’t worry. Just take your time and keep working on it until a great idea strikes! It’s better to spend a little extra time on your supermarket’s name than be stuck with a name you don’t like.
Back Up a Great Brand Name With Exceptional Shopping Experiences
A memorable supermarket name is another feather in your marketing cap and an effective way to distinguish yourself from the competition. And with over 45,000 supermarkets in the U.S. (including big-box stores), your business needs to take every advantage you can get.
While many independent supermarkets have personality in spades, some still lack the modern conveniences they need to stay competitive.
That’s why we created IT Retail, an industry-specific point of sale (POS) solution tailored for supermarket operations — at price points made for small businesses. IT Retail enables small, unique supermarkets to further build their brand with customer loyalty, e-commerce, smooth payment processing, and other convenient features.
Talk with one of our grocery and supermarket experts today to see how IT Retail can help your business grow.
by Luke Henry
