If you’re thinking of starting an at-home bakery business, you’ll obviously need to find a name for it. But before you start printing business cards, you’ll need to do a little research to make sure that the name you want to use is legally available!
You should give this a lot of thought and not go with the first thing that comes to mind, because it can cause a lot of trouble down the road if you don’t choose wisely.
This article includes affiliate links that will pay a commission if they’re used to purchase something. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Check existing registrations.
The first thing you’ll need to do is to check to make sure that any names you want to use aren’t being used already. It’s especially important to make sure that nobody in your area is using a name that’s the same, or even close.
You’ll need to check with your local business registrar, whether that’s the state, county, city, or country that handles business licenses. (click here to read about that!)
If anyone is using the same name, you should find something else, because it’s going to cause confusion and it might be illegal for you to register a business with the same name, depending on the laws where you are.
And if the other business’s name is trademarked, that will definitely prevent you from using it, so don’t even try to think of ways around that. Just choose something else.
Check at USPTO.gov to see if there are businesses anywhere on the US with that business name, and if there are, you should probably just find something else to use.
What happens if you copy another business name?
If you copy another business’s name, you’re opening yourself up to a lot of confusion and potential legal trouble, especially if they’re in your area.
You can sue someone for the possibility of confusion if their business is interfering with yours, so you don’t want to get involved with someone going after you.
There’s a business that opened a little bit away from me but still in the same delivery range, and they basically used my business name with a slight change to it.
This wasn’t a mistake, either, because she had purchased from me on Etsy and she used my brand colors and some other things!
But anyway, this caused some problems because there were wedding coordinators who knew my business because it had been around for years, and they thought that she was me.
They would call me with complaints about her cakes (one of them was in the process of falling over at the reception site) and I had to tell than that it wasn’t my cake and give them her number.
I also had customers leave reviews for her under my business listing on wedding websites, and they weren’t good reviews.
So her bad cakes had a real potential to damage my business’s reputation!
Luckily, this was happening right around the time that I wasn’t going to be doing wedding cakes anymore, but then she started selling the same thing that I sold online in my Etsy shop! (That business seems to have closed at this point as far as I can see.)
Basically, don’t be her, and come up with an original name for your business that isn’t being used already. And don’t copy someone else’s business in general.
How to decide on business name ideas.
You can go to Chat GPT and ask it to spit out a long list of potential bakery names. The problem with that is that it’s going to give you the same ideas it’s giving to everyone else, because AI doesn’t “think,” it just repeats what’s already online.
If I was going to name a new business, I would think of something that was baking-related, combine it with my name, and maybe one more word.
The reason for that is that if your name is in the business name, it automatically eliminates a lot of the potential other name conflicts that could come up.
If someone doesn’t have your name, they’re not going to have a business with your name in it, most likely.
Think of other terms that could go with your name and that sound good, and that aren’t too long, because you’re going to want to get a website and email address with the name at some point!
You also shouldn’t spell words in the name in a “cute” way, because that’s going to confuse people when they try to find your business. Avoid “cakes” spelled with a “k” and that kind of thing.
And don’t get too specific with style or product terms. If you name your business “Tammy’s Goth Cakes” you’re pigeonholing yourself. If you ever decide to add different styles or more products, you’re kind of stuck. (That’s a terrible business name, by the way, don’t use that.)
Get free downloadable control journal insert pages here.
You can make it random.
You can also go with something totally random if you’re stuck.
Go with the word “Bakery” as the second word, and then look around to see anything that you have in your house as an idea.
Here are some names that I came up with in just a few seconds doing it this way:
- Dollhouse Bakery
- Lucky Cat Bakery
- Parade Bakery
- Bluejay Bakery
- Wild Rose Bakery
- Flamingo Bakery
- Teacup Bakery
- Gold Dust Bakery
- Butterfly Bakery
- Sparrow Bakery
Write down anything that you can think of in ten minutes, then go choose the ones that you like the sound of.
Do the trademark research after that to make sure you can register the name.
A bakery name doesn’t have to be specifically about baked goods, so this is one way to get over the writer’s block of trying to figure a name out!
This is how I decided on the name of my Etsy vintage shop when I had that open. It was called “Circus Pig Vintage” after a little figurine that I have of a pig with a ruffle around his neck!
Check to see if anyone else is using the name online.
Speaking of websites, you need to make sure that whatever name you choose is available as a dot com website URL.
You’ll also need to be able to create social media accounts with the name, and since there are so many businesses on social media, it can get hard to find a name that’s available everywhere.
You can always put an extra word in the name for a social media profile, but it’s better if you don’t have to. It makes it easier for people to find you online if your name is the same everywhere.
So to sum it up, keep it simple, personal, and unique, and you’ll be better off. It could take some time to find a name that you like, but give it that time so that you don’t choose something that you’ dislike later on!’ll have trouble with later on!
