This week’s Mid-week Wizbang Contest is for the most clever business names. I’m looking for puns, innuendo, and downright ingenious terms. To cite three examples I’ve seen:
A restaurant outside Baltimore called Cluck-U Chicken; a hair styling salon in Plymouth, NH named Curl Up And Dye; and my favorite used computer store in Salem, NH, MicroSeconds.
Bonus points will be awarded for real businesses, but they do not have to actually exist.
Winners should be announced Thurdsay.
J.
City Couriers – Nobody Comes Quicker.
It’s been a while since I lived in Houston, but is the bar called “Richard Head’s Bar” still in business? One of my faves.
A bar in Davis, California called “The Library.”
“Suds,” a Dallas bar/laundromat.
Here in the Midwest we have a gas station chain called the Kum & Go.
Always thought it’d be a better name for a brothel.
The plants in our office building are provided by a company called Rentokil….
Oh yeah- just down the road from Beaver Cleaners (a dry cleaner on Beaver Avenue) near the campus of Drake University is Dick Pharmacy (on Forest Avenue.
(So as the saying goes on campus, if you meet a girl on campus that doesn’t use Beaver Cleaners, you might end up at Dick Pharmacy.)
No really- they’re real. Des Moines, IA. And yes, there are Kum and Go convenience stores in Des Moines too!
A restaurant in Calgary serving Australian food (whatever that might be) called the All Stray Inn.
A dry cleaner called Klever Klad Cleaners. The dissonant ‘C’ on the last word attracted the eye. Or maybe the owner was an idiot.
In Columbus, OH, there is a record store called Magnolia Thunderpussy.
Day Old Sushi Store
Sign at a quick stop (gas pumps and variety) in Richmond Vermont:
“Eat Here And Get Gas”
Pub in Hyannis:
Duck Inn
Howe, Dewey Cheetham & Goode, LLP
(not real)
One time in his Dilbert comic strip, Scott Adams made a joke about a business being named “Uranus Hertz”.
Laser hair removal center in either NY or NJ, cannot remember:
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.
How about “Sam ‘n’ Ella’s Chicken Hut”? Or “Loogie’s Oyster Bar” ?
There is a women’s clothing boutique in Half Moon Bay, CA named…”Damsel in a Dress”
There’s a place in La Jolla, CA named the Liquor Box. I took a double take on that one and laughed for the next week.
There’s a Vietnamese restaurant in Huntington Beach, CA called Pho My Man
A-One Laundro-Mutt
(a dog groomers)
There used to be a bar near Austin, Texas called:
“My Office”
-“Honey, don’t wait up. I’ll be working late at my office tonight.”
IHOP The batter is in the platter.
The actual name of this liquor store in Murphysboro, Illinois is “Southern Illinois Liquors”… but in big letters on the side of the building, for some reason they chose to abbreviate it:
SO
ILL
LIQUORS
(Yeah, I really want to buy something that advertises the effects like that.)
Another one: visiting Carmel, CA, back in 1980, I found a restaurant called “A Little Pizza Heaven”. Good pizza, too.
Two real ones:
El Paso Gas.
Sofa King. (With the slogan “Our prices are Sofa King low!)
Even better, imo, than Curl Up And Dye is a fake one from a Simpsons episode: Turn Your Head And Coiff. mheh.
Oklahoma City boasts a flower shop called “Floral and Hardy”.
In my hometown we had dentists named:
Dr. Belcher
Dr. Licking and
Dr. Chulick (pronounced chew lick)
Small town grocery in the mid-50s
Dew Drop In
Lawrence, Kansas had a laundr-o-mat called “777” where you could “Wash the Hell out of your clothes!”
Real place, Columbia, SC in the restaurant district called Five Points… It’s a bar (or was… I haven’t visited in 6 years) called Group Therapy. Instead of a open/closed sign, it had a sign with ‘In Session’ and ‘Cured’.
Second entry… Strip club located in North Canton, Ohio. Name? ‘The Office.’
I don’t know if this is true or not, but in Los Angeles (of course) there is supposedly a kosher Mongolian restaurant.
Name? Genghis Cohen.
Sort of related as well now that I was thinking of businesses in Columbia SC… There was a shop that serviced hydraulic equipment in town called General Jack & Grease Gun Service. A local band was looking for a decent name and began to appear as General Jack & the Grease Guns.
A Maine company that sells predator (coyote, fox, bobcat, wolf) urine for use as a repellant for varmints and pests (rats, raccoons, bunnies, deer) is called…
Leg Up Enterprises.
Edifice Wrecks, Inc., Johnstown, PA (also was the name of a destruction company in Florida)?
Midass Muffler, St. Maarten?
The Salt Lick Barbecue Restaurant in Driftwood, TX. I have one of their T-shirts: “You can smell our pits for miles.”
Totally Awesome Computers – actual business
Bad Ass Coffee Company – A donkey for a mascot (something about a donkey carrying the coffee beans in Hawai)
Brew’d Awakening – yet another coffee shop
Bag Lady Botique – Used clothes store
Should have added this, but the guy who owns Totally Awesome Computers has 2 other businesses called Totally Awesome Guns and Range and Totally Awesome Flying Sports.
There used to be a sandwich shop in a high tech office park in Austin, TX called the
CTRL ALT DELI
I’ve always wanted to open a lunch place called:
Chez What
I’d serve the kind of street (i.e. fast) food you get in Europe – sausage, doner kebab, Belgian Fries (French Fries done right), crepes etc. I’d probably skip Dutch raw or pickled Herring, though.
The Paris Hilton Think Tank
(a no-profit organization)
One I recall from the background of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon a long time ago was “Oedipus Wrecks” on a truck with a wrecking ball attached.
law firm: Hissey & Fitz LLP
chinese places: Wok This Way, Wok Around the Clock
Ocean City, Maryland – Mother Clucker’s
Oxford, Mississippi – Steak and Titties
The Suck and Tuck…liposuction and plastic surgery
The Oedipus Retreat…a camp for troubled teens…and mothers
Quivering Bar and Grill…a “real” (well as real as anything gets at burning man) grill who’s motto was “Reclaiming virginity through the ritual sacrifice of beer and cattle!”
As long as law firms are fair game, there’s always the notorious firm of:
Bain, Dover, and Lovitt.
Real one in Alaske at a dog grooming shop – “Doggie Style”
Actual hair salon in Jefferson, Wisconsin:
Best Little Hair House
Hawthorne, CA – Kevorkian Pediatrics.
Would you bring your little ones here?
There are two seperate businesses in Redding Ca.,both hot dog stands.—one called “Fast Weenie” the other ” Between the Buns”
There is a Pho place near my old school called “Pho King”. Pho is pronounced “Fuh”.
The Mafia Concrete Company We make our overshoes to order
I’ve got a couple real ones for you.
In Norfolk, VA there used to be a fast-food-ish Chinese restaurant called “The Wok Inn”.
There’s a pawn shop in Manassas, VA called “Ghengis Pawn”
Somewhere around Northern VA there is an HVAC company called “Stiff Nipples Air Conditioning”