Cartoon restaurant having a grass sod roof with goats on top of it – representing a blog post about the Restaurant With Goats On The Roof®: Al Johnson’s Goats on Roof configuration mark trademark registration.

Trademark: Al Johnson’s Goats on Roof

First Used: 1973

First Registered: 1996

Current Owner: Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant and Butiks, Inc. [1]

Trademark Type: non-traditional trademark; trade dress; configuration mark

Primarily Associated With: restaurant services [2]

Brief (and likely incomplete) History [3]:

It’s time to highlight our favorite trademark registration of all time. Al Johnson’s is a Swedish restaurant based in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. The restaurant building has a grass sod roof. And in the summer months, that roof is home to a herd of grazing goats. If you haven’t guessed by now, Al Johnson’s Goats on Roof configuration mark protects “goats on a roof of grass” in connection with restaurant services [4] and retail services [5]. Let’s learn more about THE RESTAURANT WITH GOATS ON THE ROOF® [6]!

Al Johnson’s began in 1949 as a small eatery founded by Al and his wife, Ingret. The couple leaned into their Scandinavian heritage from the start, serving traditional Swedish fare like meatballs, lingonberries, and potato sausage at a time when ethnic cuisine wasn’t exactly a Midwest buzzword. Long before the goats arrived, the restaurant had already built a reputation rooted in authenticity, tradition, and hearty Nordic comfort food.

As the legend goes, Johnson-family friend Wink Larson had a tradition of giving Al a memorable birthday gift at his restaurant every year: one year it was a burro, another a sheep, and another a baby pig. On the famous year in question, the gift was a goat named Oscar, complete with ribbons on his horns and a handwritten birthday note. From that moment, it was a short leap from goat-in-the-restaurant to dozens of goats-on-the-roof of the sod-topped restaurant. What began as a playful gag quickly became the restaurant’s defining feature.

The goats typically arrive in late-May and stay through mid-October every year, spending their days around the property and atop the sod roof and their nights in a peaceful barn on the outskirts of Sister Bay. Want to see them live but can’t make the trip to Wisconsin? Check out the official Al Johnson’s Goat Cam available online at https://aljohnsons.com/goat-cam/.

Want to learn more about other live animal trademarks? Check out our post on the Budweiser Clydesdale Horse non-traditional trademark registration.