My boyfriend and I recently bought a local Coffee drive-thru that's been around for over 15 years. The name now is catchy, "Jitters", but it's the original menu and the place needs our touch and brought completely up to date. 

We already made as many slow transitions as possible, since the place has a very loyal following, but it's time to make one of the main changes asap - re-branding.

Renaming the place has been the hardest part of this process so far. So I now turn to you for ideas and inspiration. Here is some information for what type of name we are looking for:

  • Stand-alone coffee drive-thru
  • Focus on local coffee and local baked goods
  • The customer service and high quality expected at a local cafe'
  • Fast, convenient
  • Space is literately 50 sq. ft.
  • Fun, memorable name related to "on the go/take -out" without getting the feel of cheap and low quality
  • Close to downtown and interstate
  • 85% of the customers are ages 50+ so we want to expand the customer base to young families, young professionals, local teachers (5 schools near by)

Thank you for any creative name you have to offer.

I'd like to have a few options and then let the regulars get to help choose the name.

Jen

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I think the "keep calm" part is trademarked. I'm very familiar with the posters.

coffee dash

Look for a unique characteristic of the environment around the shop or even something about yourself as the owner or the coffee you serve. Think of adjectives that you would use to describe why someone would want your coffee and use those words for potential names.

I'll make a list asap. Thanks for the idea.

I like Tom's suggestion with a few slight adjustments:

  1. Dash Coffee & Espresso
  2. Dashboard (given that it's a drive-thru)
  3. pôz (the phonetic spelling for "pause")

Those are just off the top of the dome. Good luck!

I'm looking for something that still says "quality "

All due respect, it's the product itself that will say "quality." 

My first serious coffee biz job was at a place called "Murky Coffee." Now "Murky" as a word doesn't automatically denote quality and you can have the coolest, trendiest name in the business but if your coffee's crappy then it won't matter what you're called.

I know what you mean though, totally. Is there something personal? For instance there's a coffee shop in DC called Flying Fish. Now what does Flying Fish have to do with coffee? Nothing, but the owner's name is Dutch for "fisherman" and he used to want to design cars as a kid so he came up with a flying fish logo that would be the logo for the cars. Once he got into coffee and wanted to open his own shop, he just re-purposed that name and logo for the name of his café. It's also a pretty dang good coffee shop, which is all people will care about in the end.

Thanks for the reminder, Reggie. Great point and that story inspired me to do the same.


Reggie Elliott said:

All due respect, it's the product itself that will say "quality." 

My first serious coffee biz job was at a place called "Murky Coffee." Now "Murky" as a word doesn't automatically denote quality and you can have the coolest, trendiest name in the business but if your coffee's crappy then it won't matter what you're called.

I know what you mean though, totally. Is there something personal? For instance there's a coffee shop in DC called Flying Fish. Now what does Flying Fish have to do with coffee? Nothing, but the owner's name is Dutch for "fisherman" and he used to want to design cars as a kid so he came up with a flying fish logo that would be the logo for the cars. Once he got into coffee and wanted to open his own shop, he just re-purposed that name and logo for the name of his café. It's also a pretty dang good coffee shop, which is all people will care about in the end.

How did you come up with your shop name?

Well, it's not a shop (yet) just a registered brand BUT the name is clearly kind of a play on the whole first, second and third wave of the coffee industry. In Sweden, people drink a lot of coffee. A lot of very strong, dark and bitter coffee. But there is a strong cafe culture but it seems to have settled into a rut centered around the Italian style espresso bar. Which is too bad because unbeknownst to the common coffee drinker there is an extremely talented and passionate group of roasters and baristi focusing on high quality coffee, roasted a bit lighter than what people here may be used to. So the obstacle we face here is that while from an internal standpoint, coffee afficianados here are totally up to speed with the pace and trends of the rest of the coffee world, the "scene" as a hold is being held up by both customers but worst of all retailers who don't know/don't care about the current trends.

So to make a long story short, I figured No Wave Coffee sounded "edgy" or whatever but in a way I was trying to say that let's not get too caught up in ourselves and let's reach out and invite those that may be a bit reluctant or hesitant to change, on either side of the counter-top. So forget "waves" and forget trends (even if we're totally embracing them!) and focus on communication, outreach and not being afraid to share our enthusiasm for coffee. We're not quite working from a position of strength, so we can't afford to lose customers by being too pretentious (I say this knowing full well that "No Wave Coffee Company" sounds fairly pretentious!)




But how's your search going?

I like that name.

I think it's to the point I need to stop trying to figure it out and just clear my mind and not try so hard.

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