In the early stages of my restaurant career, I would ask restaurant owners how they came up with a name for their restaurant.  One owner told me he would use a mascot associated with the name and he felt that brought him good luck.  So I decided to adopt that philosophy.  At the time of building this restaurant, I became aware that Florida had bears (black bears).  I also learned that the black bear population was shrinking at an alarming rate.  So I decided to make a Bear my mascot.  This accomplished two things.  One, I had a mascot and two, we could educate people about the Black Bear in our newsletters.  Having said all that, our concept was to brew handcrafted beers to go along with our excellent food.  So in 1996, Big Bear Brewing Co. was born.