Yep, that's pretty much our branding in a nutshell. A big thanks to one of our twitter fans for putting it so simply and succinctly.
Nothing in life is however quite that simple. Are those rabbits or hares in the illustrations, many people have asked us, and what's the difference anyway? We maintain they're hares but physiological accuracy was admittedly never a part of the brief we gave Dermot Flynn, our long-time friend and creative illustration collaborator.
'Why all the bunnies?', was another Kinnegar drinker's take on our branding. Yes, why all the bunnies? Simple. When coming up with a name for the company we took the pretty pedestrian path of choosing a local place name. The Kinnegar is a lovely beach just a stone's throw or two from the original brewery. The word Kinnegar is an anglicisation of coinicéar which means rabbit warren and derives from coinín*, Irish for rabbit.
So, if Kinnegar means rabbit warren, then why do we have a hare in our logo? Because nothing in life is that simple. We're definitely not the first to take some liberties with these animals — after all, lepus is the latin for both rabbit and hare.
*As an aside, coinín is also the origin of coney, as in Coney Island, the most famous of which might be in Brooklyn but there are plenty more Coney Islands dotted around the Irish coast. The only hot dogs you'll find on these islands though are the ones chasing the rabbits through the dunes.
