The Cracker Barrel in Belleville still has lots of space between the tables, which is good, because a statistically improbable number of customers the other morning were using canes or walkers.
I was there because the latest consumer outrage about alleged corporate wokeness seemed even sillier than most of the other fits of outrage and I wanted to see the fury-inducing changes for myself. Also, I wanted breakfast.
The breakfast was a success. The same goes for the recoil against Cracker Barrel, which announced Tuesday evening, Aug. 26, that it was going back to the logo whose replacement touched off so much reaction that you’d almost think it was important.
“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have,” the company said in a statement to USA TODAY. Then it ran back into the freezer and locked the door.
The conniption — a properly old-fashioned word, considering the restaurants’ rustic decor and pretend general store — started last week.
Cracker Barrel proudly announced a new, streamlined, unexciting logo, explained it poorly, defended it clumsily, and failed to recognize that anything remotely resembling a jab at white people, Southern heritage or tradition these days will be attacked as woke.
The new logo replaced one that had been around since 1977, eight years after Cracker Barrel baked its first biscuit in Tennessee.
In the same brown-on-golden-yellow as before, the replacement was the name of the restaurant against a horizontal background whose shape was supposed to connote a barrel, but really didn’t until someone told you.
The old-timer included, well, an old-timer, a fella in overalls with his forearm resting on a barrel.
Never mind that Mr. Overalls was simply the invention of an illustrator and that only the tiniest fraction of Americans have ever seen crackers in anything but a cardboard box. He and the words “Old Country Store,” which also vanished, were suddenly beloved.
The president of the United States weighed in on the issue and so did his incredibly accomplished namesake son. From the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Party posted on X, “We think the Cracker Barrel rebrand sucks too.”
Internet analysts decreed that the heavily credentialed female CEO must be a “DEI hire,” gloried in a faltering stock price that was on the rebound by Tuesday afternoon, ignored demographics and discovered an abiding love for a person who never existed.
So Cracker Barrel caved and never mind that the problems prompting a revised business model remain unaddressed.
If you want to make an omelet out of nothing, you have to break a few imaginary eggs.
Making America hungry again
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino told investors in May 2024 that “we are not leading in any area. We will change that.”
Getting tweeted at by the president only tied her for first place in an area, and it remains unseemly that he would continue to put the bully in “bully pulpit.” But he was gracious after the company scuttled a key part of a $700 million transformation plan.
“All of your fans very much appreciate it. Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again,” he said.
The issue remains who those customers are.
At a point where the resurgent Chili’s is rocking, Cracker Barrel is still selling rocking chairs. They’re $220 on up, chained to the wide front porch, and the restaurant is chained to them as well.
Blind loyalty to a struggling model
As of 2023, according to company data, 43% of Cracker Barrel’s customers were 55 or older, and only 23% were under 34.
Its base is retirees, after-church crowds and families on interstate highways who can’t stomach another drive-through.
Recognizing that breakfast items called The Old Timer’s and Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast are not a long-term recipe for success, the campaign called “All the More” was designed to freshen the menu, brighten some of the restaurants, and give younger diners a reason to come in besides nostalgia they don’t feel.
Cracker Barrel quickly found out that the big picture is hard to see through cataracts.
“I used to go there because I am a senior citizen and liked the nostalgic atmosphere and lack of children,” wrote a commenter named James on Yahoo Finance, Monday. “No more. Now they are catering to families with children and forgetting who their real base is. Good by Cracker Barrel.”
Low on the list
Even before the chain of 660 restaurants raised the white flag, the Belleville operation could mark itself safe from innovation.
The waitress who delivered my Grandma’s Special — two scrambled eggs, two pancakes, three smoked sausage patties, a helping of hashbrown casserole and a stern note from my cardiologist — also brought news.
The staff has been told, she said, that the modern farmhouse interior revamp that also set the internet aflame will come late to Belleville, if at all.
The menu had the new logo, but also the old stand-bys and some returning favorites. A banner out front inviting job seekers to “Make a career out of making someone’s day” also had the new logo but it was hanging beneath the big sign above the front entrance, and that sign is bolted on.
Chances are the last time the Belleville store was in the news was the early 1990s, after the company handbook decreed that it was OK to fire employees for being gay or just kinda sorta looking like they might be.
Protests erupted locally and counter-protesters showed up to say they didn’t see what the problem was.
Come 2023, Cracker Barrel drew heat from some cold corners for circulating a photo of a rainbow rocking chair during Pride Week. Now it’s woke again for trying to wipe an imaginary farmer from its logo.
If he means that much to people, they’d best come visit him more often, or he and the restaurants will disappear for good.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Cracker Barrel will keep its same old logo — and the same old problems
Reporting by Neal Rubin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
