Restaurants, cafés and food-and-drink businesses fall into class 43: services for providing food and drink, together with temporary accommodation.
But class 43 protects only the service. If you sell packaged goods under your own brand, grant franchises or develop side activities, the scope widens.
Class Map by Activity
| Activity | Class |
|---|---|
| Restaurant, café, bar, catering, temporary accommodation | 43 |
| Packaged coffee, tea, bakery goods, desserts, spices, ice cream | 30 |
| Packaged meat, delicatessen, dairy, ready meals, preserves | 29 |
| Bottled water, fruit juice, soft drinks, beer | 32 |
| Wine and other alcoholic drinks | 33 |
| Franchise network management, supply organisation, retail | 35 |
| Cookery courses, gastronomy training, events | 41 |
| Your own ordering app or platform | 42 (+ 9 for a downloadable app) |
| Branded serving plates, glasses, kitchenware | 21 |
Typical Structures
Single-site restaurant or café
Class 43 alone. Sufficient where there is no side product and no growth plan.
A café packaging and selling its own product
43 + 30 (+ 35). The most common structure: a café packaging its own coffee protects the service with 43 and the packaged product with 30. If there is a sales channel, 35 is added.
This is the point most often missed in the sector. A café holding only class 43 gains no protection for use of the mark on the coffee it packages, and someone else may register the same name in class 30.
A chain planning to franchise
43 + 35. The legal basis of a franchise relationship is a trademark licence, and registration is a precondition. The operation of the network and the business management dimension are assessed in class 35.
Why registration must come before franchising is explained in Trademarks in Franchising.
Cloud kitchen / delivery only
43 is the core. If you run your own app, 42 (and 9 if the app is downloaded); if you aggregate other restaurants on your platform, 35 arises.
Risks Specific to Restaurant Brands
1. Descriptiveness
Names containing a dish or a cuisine type carry no distinctiveness on their own. "Kebab House", "Pide Salon", "Coffee", "Burger", "Bakery" are stripped out in the similarity assessment and the comparison is made on the remaining core word.
2. Conflict with geographical indications
This is a risk peculiar to food and drink and frequently overlooked. Expressions such as "Antep Baklava", "Adana Kebap" or "Ezine Cheese" may be registered geographical indications, and applications containing one are refused.
The relationship between geographical indications and trademarks is covered in Geographical Indications and Trademarks.
3. Using a city name
Geographical names are not distinctive on their own. A name such as "Istanbul Kitchen" is weak both for descriptiveness and for distinctiveness.
4. The difference between a sign and a registration
Using a business name under a municipal licence gives no trademark right over that name. Trade name, business name and trademark are three separate legal concepts: Trade Name, Business Name and Trademark.
Before You Open a Branch
Trademark protection arises for the whole country and no registration is required per branch. But the reverse risk exists: if you open branches without registering, someone using the same name in another city may register it first and then assert it against you.
For businesses with growth plans, registration should therefore come before the branch. See Trademark Registration for Restaurants and Cafés.
Search Before You File
Class 43 is a crowded class and similar names are common in the sector. A similar-mark search before filing shows both refusal and opposition risk before fees are paid.
Let Us Build Your Scope
Share your menu, your packaged product plans and your growth targets, and our trademark registration team will separate the classes you need now from those you will need at the franchise stage.