What type of company is it? I would use a different font for BBQ sauce than I would for western wear.

Jesse,

Great question, I should have clarified. It is a restaurant, that focuses on grilled food. I am branding them in a "big shoulders of Chicago" feel. Think of Chicago in the 40's, but not going for the nostalgic "saloon" feel.

i'm sure you can pretty much choose any face you like, make a nice clean design and then rough it up in photoshop or maybe even illustrator. i don't know of any particular fonts that look like something that's been branded but there are tons of grunge fonts that might have that kind of look.

You might try looking at Sodom, Gomorrah, and/or Goshen from Chank/BLINCtype. They look branded just sitting on the page. Aquacia from Joe Coniglio also looks like something you'd see burned into the side of a barrell.

What if you ... and this is more or less a crazy idea ... but what if you typeset it in something from that era, and then laid that onto some wood and then with a hand held wood burner (the kind you can get at a craft store) you burned the letters into the wood and then photographed that? Or get a brand made with your typefaces. There must be something available like that. If you use a bold enough sans and a hard/white enough wood it would be easy to photograph.