How to Brand a Bar: Unique Bar Branding Ideas That Impress Clients

Bar branding ideas include creating a unique identity with consistent branding across your logo, decor, and staff, targeting a specific demographic, and building a strong online presence through a website and social media.

There are a variety of bars in your area, how can you make yours stand out? What can you do to persuade customers to choose your business over all other options? You can start by branding your bar.

In this article, you will find a straightforward guide on how to brand your bar and a variety of creative bar branding ideas that will help you attract more new and returning customers and increase your sales.

Bar branding is the process of creating a unique and consistent idea that speaks to a target audience. It involves creating both visual elements such as a logo, colors, and fonts, and intangible ones like tone of voice, atmosphere, and customer experience.

Bar branding is important because it helps business owners stand out from their competitors, attract their target market, and increase customer loyalty. Branding shapes how people perceive and remember the bar, communicating values, offers, and overall personality.

To brand a bar, you have to follow four main steps: defining the target audience, creating a unique visual identity, developing a brand story, and designing a marketing strategy that further enhances your branding efforts.

Let’s talk more about each step, so you can come up with the best bar branding ideas for your business.

Not every person in your area is going to become your customer and that is ok. The key to efficient bar branding ideas is to identify the people who are more likely to become your clients and convince them to keep coming back.

Start doing market research, analyze your competition and even send out some surveys to determine your target audience’s:

• Demographics: age, gender, income, education, and occupation;
• Amount of money they are likely to spend at a bar;
• Menu preferences, for both food and drinks;
• The type of atmosphere they prefer at a bar.

Here is an example of a target audience:

Young professionals, 25-30 years old, earning between $70,000 to $85,000, that are regular bar-goer and enjoys socializing after work or during weekends. They typically spend around $50 to $75 per visit and appreciate a vibrant yet sophisticated bar atmosphere with music played at a volume that still allows for easy conversation.

Consistency is what will turn your emerging bar into a memorable business. That’s why it is important to start with a well-defined brand identity that you will then use on all channels. You will need to work with a designer to create:

• A logo: go for simple and easy to remember if you want to stay at the top of your clients’ minds;
• Colors: that you can use on your website, social media, and even the décor at your bar;
• Typography: fonts that should be consistent on all your promotional materials;
• Design elements: that you will use for marketing materials and eventually merchandise.

All the bar branding ideas you try out should be consistent with your brand story. Who are you? Why did you open a bar? What does your bar stand for? What makes it special? Answer these questions so you can start crafting:

• A brand persona: if your brand was a person, what would their personality be? How would they act and talk? Once you settle on a tone of voice, you must use it on all platforms to ensure consistency;
• Unique Selling Proposition: a short sentence that describes your bar, highlighting the benefits you offer clients. For example, “Your friendly neighborhood bar, always up to lend an ear” or “Customized cocktails, guaranteed satisfaction”;
• Mission Statement: this can be a longer phrase that describes your values and your goals. For example, “Pronto bar promises to delight both your senses and your taste buds. We create custom drinks according to your preferences and offer excellent customer service that makes you feel right at home. Don’t miss out on our karaoke and live music nights!” You can easily display your mission statement on the website created with our restaurant website builder.

While you put in the work to brand your restaurant, it is time to make the branding obvious for your clients. Here are the main steps that should be part of your bar marketing strategy:

• Create a website: that showcases your name and logo. If you want a website that is also a money-making machine, you can use the restaurant website builder from GloriaFood to create a sales and SEO-optimized website. The well-crafted design and order button placement leads people to the menu where they can immediately place orders;

• Encourage reviews: and reply to them in the aforementioned tone of voice;
• Create a social media content calendar: with posts for two weeks, written in your brand’s tone of voice and adorned with your design elements;
• Run promotions: catered to your target audience’s preferences. You can use the Promotions module from GloriaFood to add offers to the top of your menu in seconds;

• Start email marketing: with the Autopilot module from GloriaFood, you can set up email marketing campaigns that reengage clients, encourage second orders and prevent cart abandonment. The emails and messages are customized according to purchasing history to enhance conversion rate.

Once you have done the hard work of branding your bar, it is time to have some fun implementing unique bar branding ideas that attract customers, increase client loyalty, and help you earn more.

One of the best bar branding ideas is to turn something that is usually boring into a fun new experience. You get to do this by using the GloriaFood POS system printer management features to customize the receipts you give to clients:

• Add logo and contact information: so clients are reminded of your bar when they will find the receipt in their pockets;
• Showcase offers or announce events at the bottom of the receipt: you can remind clients when your happy hours are, give them a coupon code, or invite them to your next live music night.

The goal of implementing bar branding ideas is to become a household name that clients instantly recognize and appreciate. You can do so by making your bar a hotspot for events such as:

• Beer or wine tasting;
• Beer festival;
• Dart championship;
• Live music;
• Karaoke night.

Collaborating with local businesses is an easy way to make your brand known to a larger audience. By getting involved with the community, you also show customers you want to play a more active role in their lives.

Here are a couple of ideas you might like:

• Sponsor local sports teams: and turn your bar into the place to be for the team and all their supporters;
• Get involved with charities: to showcase your values and involvement in the community;
• Collaborate with hotels and other accommodations to create a complete experience for customers by offering both a place to stay and entertainment.

Some bar branding ideas focus less on the physical aspects and more on the relationships you foster with your clients. Customer experience doesn’t stop when the customer leaves the bar. If you want to grow your reputation and foster a positive brand image, encourage customers to give feedback.

For example, you can schedule weekly Instagram stories where you ask clients what you can do to make your bar more to their liking. The answers will be private, and you will be able to respond and persuade them to become loyal patrons.

A powerful way to showcase your branding is through art. You can collaborate with local artists and commission them to create works of art inspired by your bar that you can then proudly display on your walls.

Moreover, you can also have seasonal drawings on your windows that will certainly attract passers-by. They will also generate user-generated content that you can share on your social media profiles.

Once your brand grows, you are ready to go to the next level with the bar branding ideas and start selling products that are customized with your logo and designs. For example:

• Hats
• Coasters
• Beer, wine, and cocktail glasses
• Aprons
• Totes

All of your branding efforts must be supported by quality menu items and excellent customer service. If you want clients to enjoy their time at the bar and keep coming back, you need the best bar POS system from GloriaFood. This is how it will help you succeed:

• Provide fast service, even during busy times: servers are able to log in the POS system in seconds with their RFID cards and find the desired menu items immediately due to the color-coded dashboard;

• Accept a variety of payment methods: you can allow customers to pay with cash, credit or debit card, smartphone and smartwatch;

• Work seamlessly offline: accidents happen, and you may be disconnected from the internet. If you use the GloriaFood POS system, you will be able to accept orders and payments as normal, with no disruption;

• Speed up service with QR code ordering: you can enable customers to order their favorite menu items and pay for them by simply scanning the QR code placed on their table. This will allow servers to focus more on making customers happy;

• Make data-based decision: get access to a variety of relevant bar statistics such a sales, number of clients, type of order, and best-selling dishes to monitor your way to success;

• Access a new revenue stream: the online ordering system from GloriaFood is perfectly integrated with the POS system, so you can start making more money by selling your menu offerings online.

Try out the unique and effective bar branding ideas mentioned in this article to impress your clients, surpass your competition, and increase your profit. Rely on the GloriaFood ecosystem to back your branding with an excellent customer experience.