The main points of a restaurant are of course the food and the service - but restaurant swag is rapidly becoming a third focus! The popularity of restaurant swag - which includes restaurant-branded merch like mugs, tote bags, aprons, custom apparel, and more - makes it a powerful promotional tool to help build brand loyalty, increase guest engagement, and even generate extra revenue.

These days, many foodie establishments - from small eateries and food trucks to diners, family bistros, city cafes, and upscale restaurants - are looking for new ways to keep their brand top of mind. That's where restaurant swag comes in, offering inventive and creative ways to create memorable brand experiences that extend beyond the dining table.

Let's dig into this inspired way of restaurant merchandising, where your recipe for success is no longer limited to just the food! 

So What Exactly is Restaurant Swag?

Restaurant swag refers to branded merchandise that represents your restaurant! Much like a takeaway order, buying swag allows your guests to take a piece of your restaurant brand home with them.

This swag can include apparel like shirts, aprons, and hats; kitchen-focused items like cookbooks (featuring your restaurant's recipes), sauces, and spices; gift items like water bottles, coffee mugs, and snowglobes; or collectibles like souvenir menus, bumper stickers, and gift cards. Your swag can be sold right at your restaurant, or on an ecommerce site like Fourthwall.

Each item becomes a fun physical reminder of their dining experience, encouraging repeat visits, especially where collectible swag is concerned, like a series of branded restaurant glasses or a new restaurant T-shirt each year. Restaurant swag items can either be sold outright for profit, or given away as promotional items, but either way, they'll help connect customers to your eatery, making them feel like part of the "club" of your restaurant!

Why You Should Sell Restaurant Swag

Restaurant swag is more than just extra stuff to sell! Creating your own restaurant merchandise line on a highly customizable ecommerce site like Fourthwall, is actually a smart business move, with positive results for both you and your restaurant guests. Check out some of the benefits:

Increase Your Brand's Reach

Swag is an excellent way to extend your brand well beyond your physical location. Customers who buy or are gifted your merch carry your brand with them, whether they’re wearing your logo T-shirt, or using one of your restaurant-branded coffee mugs at work. Then, the next time they're thinking about where to go for lunch or dinner, your restaurant merch is right there to remind them of their positive dining experiences with you!

Create Mini Billboards

Every time a customer wears your branded apparel or takes a tote bag with your restaurant’s logo on it out shopping, they’re essentially acting as a mobile mini billboard for your restaurant brand! Swag, whether purchased or gifted, keeps your brand visible in the highly competitive restaurant marketplace; particularly cool designs can even spark inquiries about your restaurant ("ooh, where'd you get that?")

Be Unforgettable

Restaurant swag is basically restaurant memories that your guests can use or wear! Many people value going to restaurants for the experience as much as the food, and taking home some restaurant swag, whether a bumper sticker, mug, or apron, keeps those memories going.This builds loyalty as your customers are reminded of your eatery, creating a lasting emotional connection to your brand and increasing the chances that they'll keep coming back to your restaurant!

Boost Your Revenue

Selling merchandise can also offer another revenue stream outside of your usual food and drink offerings. Whether it’s tote bags, mugs, or cookbooks, these items provide another way for loyal customers to support your restaurant. Limited edition runs of items like T-shirts, or deluxe editions of merch like restaurant cookbooks, can even be priced a bit higher. And special drops of event-based or seasonal items can create excitement and increase sales during specific times of the year.

10 Standout Ideas for Restaurant Swag!

1. Branded Drinkware

Whether your customers enjoy a morning latte or an afternoon soda, branded drinkwear is another great choice that combines marketing and usefulness, reminding them of your restaurant every time they use it.

Focus on distinctive designs that really make your mugs, tumblers, water bottles, and glasses stand out; of course you can (and should!) create drinkware with your restaurant's logo, but try also thinking out of the box by adding quotes relating to your cafe, images of customer-favorite food items, or even an image of your restaurant's building. Seasonal, holiday, or limited-edition mug or water bottle designs that align with your restaurant's vibe or special events can easily become collectibles, with your guests wanting to buy them all!

2. Cutting Boards and Accessories

Cutting boards, serving trays, cheeseboards, and knives are more upscale, high-quality swag items that offer both visual value and usefulness. Your guests can use them in their own kitchens, and they can make beautiful home décor pieces, especially when personalized with your branding.

Get these items to make a particularly strong impression by having your restaurant’s logo or signature dish carved into the wooden boards, or engraved onto the trays or knife handles. You could even collaborate with local craftspeople to create custom designs.

3. Custom Aprons

Both stylist and functional, custom aprons are practical items that will likely get regular use in your guests' home kitchens! Replicating the aprons that your staff wear is a fun way to get your guests to feel more connected to your restaurant, and are a great way to showcase your restaurant's branding, whether you run a bakery, cafe, diner, or fine dining establishment.

You can design these in a multitude of different ways, from a minimalist approach that just showcases your restaurant's logo, to adding an image or slogan about a popular menu item, to creating an apron with an overall pattern. You could even offer aprons in a range of colors, giving your customers more choices, while still maintaining your brand consistency.

4. Tote Bags

Reusable tote bags are a great choice, both for general usefulness and for their eco-friendly vibe. Your customers can use these branded tote bags for shopping, takeout orders, or carrying everyday items, making them a versatile branding tool.

Design your restaurant's tote bags to be both functional and trendy, out of sturdy materials like heavy cotton, canvas, or even recycled materials, and make sure that your restaurant's logo, branding, typography, and other designs are bold and attractive, so the bag becomes a fashion statement as well as a functional item. This is another item where color choices can help you sell even more!

5. T-Shirts and More

Don't forget the classics! Branded T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies are super popular choices for restaurant swag, offering excellent wearability and  brand visibility wherever customers go.

There are so many options here. You can create T-shirts that feature your restaurant's logo, clever slogans relating to your restaurant or food, or unique artwork that marks a restaurant occasion. You can then echo those designs on sweatshirts and hoodies, to keep those merch sales going even in the colder weather. And make sure to choose comfortable fabrics in a range of color choices, with quality printing for long-lasting designs.

There are plenty of shirt options to choose from at Fourthwall, where you can design your shirts, have them printed on demand, and shipped right to your restaurant or directly to your customers!

6. Hats and Socks

Hats and socks are fun, quirky swag items that can reinforce your restaurant’s brand with your logo plus fun designs and patterns. You can add witty food-related images or slogans to the socks, or use the hats as souvenirs of special restaurant events or menu items ("I Conquered the Cheesecake at the Corner Cafe!") If it suits your brand, humor can be a great selling tool!

7. Restaurant Wall Art

Does your restaurant have a particularly striking logo, distinctive visual theme, or eye-catching, colorful aesthetic? Translate that into wall art, and your guests can decorate their homes with part of your restaurant!

Whether you choose easy-to-sell prints, framed wall art, or even wooden signage, you can either create or hire artists to capture the ambiance of your restaurant in wall art. These could be artistic takes on your logo; striking pen-and-ink drawings of your building; sketched collages of your most popular menu items; or anything else restaurant-relevant that looks great as a piece of frameable art.

8. Seasonings and Sauces

What better way for your guests to bring your restaurant into their homes than with the literal flavors of your restaurant! Offering branded spices, sauces, or seasoning blends from some of your signature dishes is an ideal way to extend your customers' dining experiences at your cafe into their own kitchen.  

Make sure you're on point with your branding for these swag items, so they coordinate nicely with your brand and the rest of your restaurant's aesthetic; custom labels and packaging can be paired with recipe cards or cooking tips from your chefs for extra flair.

9. Branded Cookbooks

Cookbooks are an excellent way to extend your restaurant's brand into the home kitchen of your guests! Just think of a cookbook filled with your restaurant’s best recipes, allowing your customers to enjoy trying to recreate your dishes at home.

Design a visually appealing cookbook with beautiful images of your signature dishes, alongside stories about the food or behind the scenes tales about your restaurant. Quotes from your chefs or inspirational serving ideas can make your restaurant's cookbooks even more memorable.

10. Small (But Mighty!) Swag Items

And finally, make sure you've got some smaller swag items to offer that your guests can pick up quickly and at a lower price point. These can be items like restaurant logo magnets, stickers, or keychains; beautifully-designed gift cards; branded bottle openers; or postcards that your guests can send to their friends about their enjoyable dining experience.

Make sure even your smallest merchandise still supports your branding - for instance, a seafood restaurant could sell a fish-shaped bottle opener, while a pizza place might sell a enamel keychain that looks like a miniature slice of their pizza.

Showcase Your Restaurant's Swag!

Once you’ve chosen the right swag items, it's time to show them off! Make sure your merch is readily available for customers to see it and be able to easily buy it.

Display Your Merch

Now that you've got all of this great restaurant merch, be sure to give it a prominent place in your restaurant! Create an eye-catching display near the entrance or checkout counter of your dining establishment, and make sure staff know how to promote the merchandise to your diners. If you have the room, you could even make a small "merch store" right in your restaurant, to increase the perceived importance of your swag and make it seem more special.

Make It Visible

In addition to the merchandise itself being in ready view of your guests, place some other reminders of your swag around the restaurant. This could include table tents, blurbs right in your menus, or printed reminders at the bottom of your guest checks or receipts. Be innovative with your promotions, and sell more swag!

Create Special Events

Launching special events featuring your swag is a great way to get guests hyped about it! Create some FOMO by offering limited-edition swag promotions during special events, holidays, or seasonal menu changes - for instance, a festive mug that's only available for the month of December. Or create a sense of urgency by printing a short run of a T-shirt, for example - meaning that only 250 people can buy that particular shirt until it runs out, which helps drive sales.

Show It Off Online

Having your restaurant swag available in the restaurant is definitely a must - but you can increase your sales even more by also having it available online! With an ecommerce restaurant merch store on a platform like Fourthwall, you can have your swag available 24/7, so if a guest forgets to buy it after their meal, they can snag it online. This also increases the visibility of your merch, which some people might purchase without even having been to your restaurant yet, because you've made it look so cool!

Create and Sell Your Restaurant Merch with Fourthwall!

Get your restaurant swag ready for all of those to-go orders with Fourthwall! At Fourthwall, you can set up a fully branded online store, easily uploading your designs to the site to create a whole range of print on demand merch that matches your restaurant's branding, style, and vibe. You can even connect your social media platforms to your Fourthwall shop, to promote your new restaurant merch to a wider audience!

You can choose from a huge variety of products that you can turn into restaurant-branded merchandise, from apparel like T-shirts and hoodies to glassware, coffee mugs, tote bags, wall art, stickers, keychains, and so much more. 

You can either order products directly to your restaurant, or sell them online with Fourthwall handling the fulfillment and shipping, so your guests get their swag fast and hassle-free. Get started on Fourthwall today and serve up some successful swag!