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Posted on 08/21/2025 8:20:25 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
Has restaurant chain Cracker Barrel gone woke? The signs point to that conclusion after the company announced its latest rebranding effort.
On Tuesday, USA Today reported, Cracker Barrel plans to shed its recognizable logo — which it’s had since 1977 — featuring a man sitting in a chair leaning on a barrel next to the restaurant’s name.
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournal.com ...
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what did that cost?
including focus groups
modernize a restaurant
whose appeal is nostalgia
must be a harvard mba
That pretty much sums up the situation where I live as well.
“No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.”
— Yogi Berra
The idea of being “old fashion” was part of their branding...not a smart move.
I don’t find it a big deal. Burger King and Wendy’s changed logos a few years ago, and Kentucky Fried Chicken changed the name, and turned Colonel Sanders into a cartoon character. All the McDonald’s and Wendy’s seemed to change their interior modeling for less comfortable seating and a boring neutral aesthetic.
On another thread, someone suggested that Cracker Barrel changed the interior because dusting takes too long with all the bric-a-brac.
I like the traditional look, but Cracker Barrel probably likes getting the attention. Lumping changing the logo in with making a Dylan Mulvaney beer can is ridiculous. One is pushing perversion, the other is a corporate logo simplification that happens all the time.
Maybe the guy at the Cracker Barrel can meetup with the missing Land o’ Lakes Injun Lady, and they can have some cheese and crackers together.
But to be honest, that's part of the charm of Cracker Barrell. People don't go there for a new look and feel and taste. They go there for nostalgia. So a "relic" type logo IMHO is good branding and shouldn't have been changed. Moreover, when I pass by a Cracker Barrell it always seemed full (I don't eat out much). So I don't know why anyone would want to mess with what was working.
Don’t have a CB near me, but went to one in the midwest 15 years ago.
Quite memorable - heavy wood interior, wooden tables, with a giant central stone fireplace which had a roaring fire going.
I hope they don’t think that success will come by turning into an IHOP.
must be a harvard mba
~~~
The big corps get sold onto the idea that your trademark needs to be a simple but recognizable icon.
They loose touch with the concepts of tradition, customer familiarity/loyalty, and having an established distinguishable brand, and they fall for the notion that you need a symbol, and the ones who are bushing it make them feel envious of other corporations whose icons are readily identifiable.
It’s silly, and that’s how you know your business has jumped the shark or at least has peaked and the downslide is ahead
It's no longer "my" money after I spend it. They can do what they please with it. I believe in Freedom more than avoiding those who don't share my every little preference in life. Their food is still excellent, their service is excellent, and the Left hates them which makes me even more eager to spend money there.
“New logo looks like it could be a new Taco Bell or something.”
Taco Barrel. But I probably shouldn’t give them any ideas.
They’ll be either bankrupt in two years, or bought out by some equity firm.
I’ll bet they start selling Bud Light.
Should have been a barrel with white people standing in it.
I GOT IT:
Put Aunt Jemimah on the label!
Maybe they should have just put Dylan Mulvaney in the chair next to the barrel.
Always liked that line. We were going to eat at a Cracker Barrel a few years ago but there was a line outside, so we went somewhere else, and that’s the nearest I’ve ever been to dining at CB.
Cracker Barrel is in a situation similar to Red Lobster was even before all the "woke" stuff. Deteriorating quality, high prices, and the aging out of their main customer demographic, Boomers, especially those in the South, are major reasons for the decline of the chain restaurants that were so popular in the last 20 years of the 20th Century.
In one sense, eliminating the old white man and the cracker barrel was not a bad move. Many Boomers and even older Gen Xers had grandparents who lived in small towns and fed them country cooking when they visited from the city. That experience is less common among Millennials and Gen Zers whose grandparents more frequently lived in a city or suburb. However, eliminating a rural white man from their logo has the effect of angering the conservative half of the U.S. population, who reside mostly in those territories where Cracker Barrel restaurants exist. The legacy media is less effective in driving the narrative and the networks of conservative talk radio and conservative and alt-right bloggers and podcasters will spread the no more old white guy narrative. They cannot make up for the loss with upper middle class white liberals or minorities, who generally don't live close to these restaurants and whose tastes are different from Cracker Barrel fare.
I suspect that by 2035 most Cracker Barrel restaurants will be repurposed or demolished.
The chain cited ongoing challenges with store performance and post-pandemic difficulties as reasons for these closures."
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