The BigSkyChef mark started as a sketch on a napkin at a diner in Livingston. I was trying to explain to a friend what I was building — not a restaurant, not a catering company, not a food blog. Something that lived in the space between the kitchen and the landscape.

I drew a mountain. Then I drew a chef's hat on top of it. It was terrible. We laughed about it for twenty minutes.

But the idea stuck. The mountain is the land — the Big Sky country, the open range, the wilderness that shapes everything about how I cook. The culinary element is the craft — the technique, the discipline, the years of training that let you do something meaningful with what the land gives you.

The final mark went through about forty iterations before it landed where it is now. The designer I worked with — a woman in Bozeman who does mostly ranch and outdoor brands — understood immediately what I was going for. She said: 'You want it to look like it's been here forever.' That's exactly right.

A brand mark should feel inevitable. Like it couldn't have been anything else.