Foltz found inspiration one day while sitting in her living room surrounded by her collection of pigs, which includes porcelain pigs, wooden pigs, pigs on potholders, pigs on place mats, pigs of every kind and shape. It just came to me that I should name it Bonnie's Pig Pen Cafe. And evidently so do her customers in the tiny town of Leon, Kansas, population 600. Two years after opening, Bonnie's Pig Pen Cafe is home to a 125-piece pig collection, many of them brought in by customers. They bring me back pigs from when they go on vacation.
Some restaurateurs say they never had to think up a name.
In the case of Dona Abramson and Stuart Tarabour, their restaurant's name came with the location. Ron Silberstein knew that he had found the perfect name for a brewpub when he read a newspaper article about a bear that had escaped from a circus in the Ukraine. According to the story, the bear entered a pub, stole a patron's beer and then fell asleep in the park next door after drinking it. Silberstein and his partners, Ragnhild Lorentzen and Pablo Zubicaray, decided to dub their newly opened San Francisco brewpub the ThirstyBear Brewing Company. Selecting the proper appellation is one key to a restaurant's success.