What a fun first step!
But it can be an overwhelming one, too.
Some people may have a business name picked out for years before they ever start one. Sort of like names for children and pets that you might have one day.
But if you don’t, then giving your cookie business a name is a significant step in getting started.
The truth is, you can call your business absolutely anything you want.
Think of all the big brands out there with names that tell you absolutely nothing about the product …… Apple, Starbucks and Yahoo! are just a few.
For right now, we’ll push the global iconic brands to the side and focus on what you are doing.
The information here will hopefully help you streamline the ideas you may already have, so you can develop a name that feels like a winner to you.
When thinking about potential cookie business names, you can lump candidates into 4 general categories. And you can combine more than one category to come up with something that really hits the mark of what you’re after. I’ll explain this in detail below.
4 General Categories for Cookie Business Names
1 – Your own name
2 – Key descriptive words that relate to cookies or baking
3 – If applicable, anything that is very specific to your cookies, eg. Gluten Free or Vegan
4 – Words or phrases that you just really like
Let’s look at each category……
1 – Use your own name
This makes a lot of sense since making cookies is already such a personal gesture. And it’s likely that many people in your life already think of you as a cookie baker, so building the business name around your own name can work really well. It’s very common to see a person’s name as part of a food business.
Here are some national cookie brands that use a person’s name:
We’re used to seeing these on shelves at big grocery stores, but remember that when they started out, these were likely named after the person who made them.
For examples that relate more closely to what we’re talking about here, I scanned cookie businesses currently featured on Etsy. Here are a few of the many that use the baker’s name:
Cookies By Mira
Silvia’s Gingerbread
Kelley Hart Cookies
Linda’s Edible Art
Pete’s Custom Cookies
Lizy B’s Bakeshop
Treats by Taryn
When I was working on the name for my own cookie business, for some reason I just didn’t want to use my own name. I can’t say why exactly, I just didn’t. And that’s a perfectly good reason.
I did, however, have a strong pull toward the word “joyful”, and that brings us to the next category.
2 – Descriptive words about cookies & baking.
If you analyze a long list of cookie business names, you see that a few specific words pop up over and over. These are the words most commonly used to clearly convey a cookie / baking description for a business:
Sweet
Sugar
Treat
Confection
Cookie
Delight
Design
Kitchen
Oven
Bake
Two of the most heavily utilized words are
“sweet” and “cookie” (big surprise).
Back to my own personal example where I did not want to use my name and I did want to use the word “joyful”. To me that word just perfectly hit the tone of how I felt about my cookies.
After playing around with “joyful” and cookie & baking-related words, I settled on a name that just felt right….
3 – If applicable, include your specific niche eg. Gluten Free or Vegan
Jenna’s Gluten Free Treats
Bianca’s Vegan Sweets
Keto Cottage
Notice that the first 2 both included words from 3 categories:
- Their own name
- Descriptive words that reference baking
- Reference to their specific niche
Potential customers will immediately know exactly what these businesses offer, and people who are seeking that out will be very likely to respond.
4 – Words or phrases that you really like
After all, you can call your cookie business anything you want to call it. You can crumple up my little analysis and throw it away. If you have a connection to a certain phrase and you just have to use it, then use it. It’s your cookie business, and you should love the name.
The national food mail order site called Goldbelly features a number of cookie companies with quirky names that were meaningful to whoever started them:
Baked in Color
The Baked Bear
Gooey on the Inside
Sugar & Scribe
The Gingered Peach
Two Fat Cats Bakery
If you haven’t already, it’s time to start coming up with potential cookie business names that will work for you, and that you love.
Once you have some great ideas, the next part of the process is to make sure that someone else isn’t already using the exact same business name.
Thousands of small businesses exist, and there are certainly instances where the same or very similar name is being used by more than one company or person.
This is just fine in many cases, since a small business can function within its own local universe and a similarly named company elsewhere makes no difference.
But, if there was another business near you with the same or similar name, it could cause confusion and problems for both.
Example:
Jenny’s Cookies and Jennie’s Cookies in the same city would not be a good situation.
Also, you shouldn’t choose a name that is already used by large and already established business. This includes companies with multiple locations or a national presence. Websites like Etsy and Goldbelly deliver a national audience to customers, so major online shops count, too.
Example:
Big Fat Cookie is a Chicago based cookie shop that sells through Goldbelly, a national website. Goldbelly features food businesses from all over the country, and offers food gifts and mail order foods shipped nationwide.
If you wanted to call your business “My Big Fat Cookie”, at some point you would likely be contacted by some legal people who would suggest that you stop using that name.
And it goes without saying that you can never use any sort of trademarked brand in your name.
Example:
If your specialty is intricately decorated cookies from movies like Frozen, Tangled & Moana, you couldn’t name your company something like “Disney Princess Cookie Designs”.
Time to do some additional research.
Doing some digging in a number of targeted areas will help to find potential issues with the names on your short list.
First stop, good ‘ol Google search.
I’m going to go through an example using a name I might have wanted for my own business. Earlier I mentioned that I didn’t want to use my own name for my cookie business, but if I had wanted to do that, it would have been something like “Sweet Anne’s Cookies”.
Right off the bat, it’s asking me if I meant “Sweet Annie’s Cookies”, so that’s a real business because it’s coming up right away in Google’s search engine.
But nothing for Sweet Anne’s Cookies, so that’s good news so far.
But Annie is pretty close to Anne, and certain people in my life do call me Annie, so I should look into this.
“Sweet Annie’s” comes up numerous times in different forms when searching Google:
Sweet Annie’s Cookies – home bakery in Houston, TX
Sweet Annie’s Cookies – bakery in Conshohocken, PA
Sweet Annie’s Baked Goods – home bakery in Florida
Annie’s Sweets & Treats – coffee shop / bakery in Frisco, TX
Sweet Annie’s Ice Cream & Bake Shop – Canada
Annie’s Cookie Factory – Boynton Beach, FL
Annie The Baker – Napa, CA
Good news for me – I don’t live near any of these places.
And I’ve learned that Annie is a popular name among bakers.
I need to research further than just Google search. I’ll look on Etsy, Facebook and Instagram for businesses called “Sweet Anne’s”.
No shops using the words “Sweet Anne” in the baking category
Sweet Anne’s – crafts
SweetAnn – outside the U.S.
Sweet Anne’s Kitchen – in Philippines
Anne’s Sweet Treats – in Australia
Anne’s Sweet Delights – outside the U.S.
Sweet Anne’s – California
Anne’s Sweet Shop – Colorado
The verdict?
The potential business name “Sweet Anne’s Cookies” passes the competitor search test:
- No large, established businesses are using that name
- Similarly named businesses are in distant locations
- Words used are common and available to anyone
This was a really long post. Thank you for reading through to the end!
If you’re working on your cookie business name and would like some friendly help or just want to share, please contact me anytime. I really love this kind of project and would be happy to help you get through it.