What’s in a Name?

The name ‘Angel Food’ was the result of a long brainstorming session between myself and my sister Sue. We were setting up a wholesale vegan and gluten-free bakery (she’s a brilliant baker) and we wanted a name that would be widely loved and had connotations of delivering treats that people would otherwise miss out on. This was back in 2006, when vegan treats were not widely available. 

I was already in the vegan cheese biz, importing tiny quantities by air freight from the UK. I used the name ‘Vegan Vittles’ for that low-key operation, but nobody knew what vittles meant so it wasn’t the greatest business name! (Vittles is an old English word for food, and it is still used in the US, especially when referring to cowboy food!)

The bakery business was not a success, and when we closed it down after only a year or so, I decided to focus on vegan cheese and keep using the name Angel Food.

Although cheese is very different from cake, the name still works. It conveys the sense of delivering products that fit certain dietary requirements and that people love so much that it elevates their enjoyment of everyday life.

Choosing a business name is difficult! It has to convey the essence of your business - or be something that you can imbue with the essence of your business. It has to be inoffensive and easy to spell and to say. And you don’t always know how the name will be received until it’s out there in the wild.

You also have to go through a lot of names to find one that you can claim the relevant URLs and relevant social media handles for. 

I think we struck it lucky and chose a pretty good name. The main issue we have with it is that people automatically put an ‘s’ on the end, assuming we’re Angel Foods rather than Angel Food. We also occasionally get ‘Angle Foods’ which is doubly wrong, and people do somehow confuse us with Angel Bay (who make meat patties so are quite different from us).

Our name has stayed the same through several shifts of focus in the business, but it’s our logo which has evolved the most! The hot pink logo featuring an angel delivering cake worked for the original baking business, but doesn’t make sense for plant-based cheese!