Restaurant Domain Name Ideas & How to Choose the Best One for Your Business

Picking the right restaurant domain name can affect how many people visit your website. Before choosing the right one for you, brainstorm a variety of restaurant domain name ideas. If you select a memorable restaurant domain name, customers will find it easier to remember your website. With an off-brand or complicated name, they will have a hard time finding you online.

Using a great restaurant website builder will help your customers order food from you. Without a good domain name, though, it’s unlikely that your website will generate many orders. Use the following do’s and don’ts to make sure you choose a name that will boost your restaurant sales and check out our restaurant domain name ideas for inspiration.

How to Choose a Restaurant Domain Name: Do’s and Don’ts

Do: Base the Domain Name on Your Restaurant’s Name

Ideally, you should use your restaurant’s name as your restaurant domain name. Whether you can use your restaurant’s name, though, depends on whether another business has already purchased the domain. For example, if you own a restaurant called "Nelly’s Grill," you can’t use nellysgrill.com as your domain name. Someone else already owns it.

To check domain name availability, use a website like GoDaddy. Just enter your desired restaurant website name and hit enter. If you’re lucky enough to find more than one domain name you like, make an available domain names list and pick your favorite at the very end.

Before you even try to buy a domain name for a restaurant online, search the internet for restaurants that share your name and check for the ones with available extensions (.com; .net, .kitchen, .bar, etc.) You may find some restaurant domain name ideas that you like and that are easy to remember.

If you want to buy more than one domain name extension to prevent your competitors from buying them or because you want to emphasize one part of your business, feel free to do that. For example, if your main website domain is joesburgers.com, you can also consider joesburgers.promo where you feature all your existing promotions and discounts.

Do: Add Unique Information to Your Restaurant’s Name

If someone already owns the domain name that you want, then you can add information to make your URL unique. Let’s say you own Nelly’s Grill in San Francisco’s Mission District. You could use your location to create a unique restaurant domain name like:

• nellysgrillmission.com
• nellysgrillsf.com
• nellysgrillcali.com

You can also try using food-related domain names. If Nelly’s Grill specializes in hamburgers, then you might try restaurant domain name ideas like:

• nellysburgers.com
• nellysbestburgers.com
• nellyshamburgers.com

In general, adding keywords to your restaurant domain name is recommended because it helps with SEO. It also makes it clear to customers what they can expect to eat at your establishment.

Do: Use Alternative Top-Level Domains

Top-level domains include .com, .net, and, .org. They’re the suffixes at the end of website addresses. When you do a domain search, you should also look at options outside of the most popular suffixes. You will find that you can search for a GoDaddy domain that makes your website address more memorable, like:

• .kitchen
• .catering
• .eat
• .kosher
• .pizza
• .restaurant
• .beer
• .coffee
• .pub
• .menu
• .farm
• .cafe
• .cooking
• .organic

These are newer extensions, and there are plenty of good restaurant names that haven’t been used alongside them.

Alas, here’s what to do if your domain name is taken: don’t sweat it. If someone already bought nellysgrill.com, you can use the .kitchen domain, instead. As long as no one owns nellysgrill.kitchen, you can register it and start accepting online orders.

Don’t: Go Too Far Off-Brand

Taking an inventive approach can help you find food website names that your customers will remember. A catchy name that goes too far off-brand, though, probably won’t increase your online orders.

Sticking with the “Nelly’s Grill” example, you shouldn’t register food domain name ideas like:

• Bestburgers.com
• HamburgersMission.com
• Besthamburgers.com

… since they're way too general.

Customers won’t connect these domain names to your restaurant’s name unless you have used the saying as a slogan. If you frequently call your restaurant, "Nelly’s Grill: Best Mission Burgers!" then you could probably use bestmissionburgers.com. Those opportunities don’t often happen, in any case.

And speaking of brands, don’t use other brand names in your restaurant domain name either. Names of different restaurants or food brands are off-limits because you might get sued for using them, and you’ll also confuse customers who won’t know which one you are.

Don’t: Get a Long Domain Name

The longer it gets, the more difficult it will be for your customers to get it right and reach your website fast. Moreover, you shouldn’t use numbers or even dashes when considering different restaurant domain name ideas. People won’t remember where they go.

Avoid commonly misspelled words or those that have repeated letters because customers will get it wrong often. Alternatively, buy the misspelled domains as well and redirect them to your actual website.

Does having “restaurant” in the domain name help? Including the word restaurant in the domain name might make it too long and hard to remember. Better go for your specific cuisine or choose the .restaurant extension.

Don’t: Get Too Niche

Especially if you want to expand in the long run, in terms of location as well as the menu, it might be counterproductive to have a restaurant domain name like joespizzaconcord.com. Maybe you’ll want to sell more than pizza or someplace else rather than Concord. Then, your website won’t be topical anymore.

What’s Next: Domain Registration

Once you’ve reduced your list of restaurant domain name ideas to just one that’s perfect for you, it’s time to register the domain. And it’s best to do it quickly - if someone else does it before you get the chance to, then you'll be back to square one; meaning, you'll have to start searching for another great restaurant domain name.

What is domain name registration and what does it entail?

It’s basically like reserving the website name for a specific time, but not forever. Now, you may be wondering how to buy a domain name permanently to avoid the hassle of renewing the domain every year. While that’s not technically possible, you can pay in advance for up to 10 years, which guarantees you won’t have to think about buying a new domain name for a long time.

How to get a domain name for free

While most restaurant domain names are not that expensive, costs can add up, especially if you want to pay for it for years in advance. The good news is that most domain registration websites such as Squarespace, Bluehost, and Weebly also offer free domains.

Where is the best place to buy a domain name?

That depends on your needs.

• For domain registration + web hosting, GoDaddy is the best choice.
• For cheaper domain names, try NameCheap.
• For unique name suggestions, give Hover a shot.
• You can also use Google Domains if you want to integrate your domain with your G Suite easily.

Restaurant Domain Name Ideas To Jumpstart Your Creativity

Never base your restaurant’s name on your domain name. Choosing your restaurant name from an available domain names list will always lead you down the wrong path.

Instead, choose your restaurant name first, with some competition research, SWOT analysis or with the help of a restaurant name generator. Then, sit down with some creative friends and business partners to brainstorm unique restaurant domain name ideas. You can worry about domain name registration after you have the name you want to use.

To help you with your domain name selection, here are a couple of restaurant domain name ideas split into categories to get you started:

• Owner name: dottiespizzeria.com, huangschinesebistro.com
• Location: cucinany.com, thecreperynewyork.com
• Experience: hulabistro.com, notyouraveragebistro.com
• Unique product: sweetsonastick.com, fiveguysfries.com
• Foreign words: cucinadinonna.com, tapasole.com

If you’re feeling uninspired, you can use a domain name generator like NameMesh, InstantDomainSearch, or DomainWheel to come up with keywords to use in your restaurant website name.

Did you find the perfect name for your restaurant website after going through our restaurant domain name ideas and advice? Next, use a restaurant website builder to make sure your customers can place pickup and delivery orders as smoothly and as quickly as possible.

Learn more: Must-Have Restaurant Website Features