Designing Animal Characters as Restaurant Mascots

Here is a great case study of some very smart family owned restaurant owners and how they used an animal as their restaurant mascot. The restaurant prides itself on being a family oriented barbecue restaurant with catering services and is located in beautiful Pisgah Forest in North Carolina. It is my understanding that there are many barbecue restaurants in and around the area, but these owners had a brilliant idea to set themselves apart from their competition.

They contracted this freelance cartoonist for hire to design the cartoon mascot of a hog for their barbecue restaurant. A hog seems a very fitting choice for the animal mascot as most people (that is if you’re like me) “pork out” at barbecues, don’t they? Or in this case complimenting the name of this restaurant and tying it in; going “Hawg Wild” for barbecue.

I started by designing the friendly hog character and incorporated it into a new restaurant logo. The brilliant idea behind this was “how” the restaurant owners intended to use the character beyond the logo. The restaurants’ main target audience was “families”…when entering into the restaurant, they would give each child a few crayons and a black and white printed sheet of paper featuring their hog mascot. While the families ordered and enjoyed their meals, the children would color the image of the restaurant mascot. This engaged the children during the meal and once they completed coloring the mascot, the restaurant would proudly display the drawing on the restaurant walls.

The act of children coloring the mascot image not only engaged and delighted the children during the meal, but also was subconsciously embedding the friendly image (i.e. logo) of the hog in their developing minds and tying that image together with the memorable taste of delicious barbecue food. The act of displaying the image on their walls after the meal showed the restaurant’s appreciation and gave pride to the children of the families who patronized the restaurant.

If you are a business and are wanting a mascot to represent your business or to be incorporated into your logo, then contact this freelance cartoonist to discuss the many ways you could engage your target audience with a cartoon character designed specifically for your business or product.