Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 08/22/2025 4:32:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Cracker Barrel (“CB”) recently announced with great pride (pun intended) that they have become woke and are implementing customer-facing DEI throughout their restaurant chain, a project that has been in the works for about a year. Proving once more that idealistic leftists are oblivious to anything remotely involving sanity.
The Left never seems to learn. Their DEI agenda is so important that they willingly crater their own businesses. Even Left-leaning news channels and their famous anchors have learned that they are not immune to this effect. I have doubts about the success of this new direction, for a couple of reasons.
1) Woke people who pretend to live healthy lives don't eat there anyway -- you know, because of the biscuits, gravy, fried chicken, calories, fat, etc., where just one glass of sweet tea likely has more calories than they consume in a day. Somehow CB thinks taking the "country" out of Cracker Barrel, removing the old white dude and his barrel from the logo, and making the decor look like a latte cafe will entice them in. (I have a bridge to sell you).
2) Their loyal fans, including me, have no interest in overall DEI wokeness when it is an in-your-face action. Hire whoever you wish, as I don’t care about the proclivities of my server or the cook, so no problem there. But I do care about the thinking of leaders who believe this is a good direction to pursue as a business. I admit I limit my meals there to no more than one per quarter just because I get three days’ worth of calories in one very delicious meal.
CB will lose a big part of their base while not recouping that volume with new customers from the woke mob.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
more libtard hatred of the good for being the good
I still like to eat there.
I get the lemon pepper trout, turnip Greens and either pinto beans or cole slaw depending on how my blood sugar is doing.
I love the Broccoli Cheddar Chicken, but they always seem to run out. Catfish is acceptable.
When it comes to veggies it’s hard to find a restaurants offering a variety.
The one change I’ve noticed is that they removed a sound wall dividing the largest room. That made the room a lot louder and not as private. They also removed the option for 1 filet of Catfish and now you have to order 2.
I wonder if they will follow Golden Coral with colored food portions. Two restaurant chains with bad food, in any case.
I went there...... once.
Leftist bubble-life meets the real world.
I used to like to go there
The old way was good to see
But when they went with their
Gay Pride Parades chairs 🪑🪑🪑
that made me start turning away
The Woke garbage turned me away
from Chick-fil-A too... haven’t
been there but maybe 2-3 times in
the last 5 years total and not at
all for the last 2-3 years.
[The Left never seems to learn.]
They don’t WANT to learn.
The Left wants to PROPAGANDIZE you.
The Left wants to INDOCTRINATE you.
The Left wants to CONVERT you.
The Left wants to DEMONIZE you into
Satan’s Godless Reprobate Rebellion
against Almighty God and Heaven.
[Major League Baseball ⚾ (Texas Rangers are the lone exception), etc.]
The ... Lone Rangers ...
“Sad to see these leftist ruin something else that was good.”
The demise of Bud, Cracker Barrel, and other once great brands (Sears, JC Penney, and Kmart) are due to a general failure of corporate governance in the United States. The business destroying CEO”s are hired by boards of directors. The board members are ostensibly put in place to oversee the management of the company, protect the integrity of the brands, ensure assets are being utilized efficiently, and have a watchful eye over the CEO and senior management actions. These board members are paid $200,000 to $300,000 per year each and there are typically 8 to 12 members on a board. Therefore the cost to the business is not inconsequential, several million dollars per year. Cracker Barrel has 9 “independent” board members in addition to the CEO.
Independent board seats are typically filled by senior or retired corporate executives from other companies, attorneys, college professors, retired politicians, and occasionally community activists. Boards were once dominated by white males but today have a diverse racial and gender mix.
So why aren’t these highly paid corporate board members reviewing business plans of the CEO and intervening when a rebranding effort is proposed? It takes decades to build a strong, highly recognized and successful brand. The strength of a brand is highly reliant on a number of tangible and intangible factors. Changing core elements of the brand, such as the logo, store design, quality, and product mix are highly risky due to the potential to alienate long time loyal customers. If the Budweiser board and Cracker Barrel board had been doing their jobs as the ultimate protectors of the company and its brands, they would have slowed down or halted a radical brand “modernization” program until it could be thoroughly tested. The Cracker Barrel board members are especially negligent given the recent the highly publicized financial meltdown of Bud Light brand and its parent company due to brand mismanagement.
Board seats in the United States need to be more than cushy and lucrative parking places for retired executives, politicians, etc. Board members must be more than casual observers and advisors, they must step in to protect the company and its brands when management goes off track.
Furthermore the Cracker Barrel, Bud Light and New Coke fiascos demonstrated business schools are failing. Many senior corporate executives have MBA degrees. Are business schools today so obsessed with teaching financial manipulation and cost reduction they are failing in teaching the fundamentals of brand building and the importance of intangible assets of the brands responsible for the sales of the company?
(It takes decades to build a strong, highly recognized and successful brand)
Yep. And just a few months to undo decades of hard work with the Homosexual Agenda / LGBTQ+ garbage.
And most of the customers lost will NEVER return.
That is the problem for CB. We don't need them. It is just a fun bit of variety.
They changed their menu a few times the last couple of years and started serving alcohol. That may explain the fluctuation or flat lining of its stock value. I do not care for anything except their breakfast. Their chicken and dumplings are okay, not amazing, just okay. It really is the atmosphere. All food chains are struggling so why do something this drastic and drive away boomers?
As far as the boomer generation dying off, they are jumping the gun. The last of the boomers are still about 3 or four years from eligible for retirement at 65. CB is popular with boomers because of the atmosphere. I don't buy candy for the most part, but the occasional Mallow Cup or some other candy from my youth is a fun break. Although I have to say my more mature tastes makes me wonder what I saw in the candy in the first place. Boomers will be around for a couple more decades which is a lifetime in the chain restaurant business. CB is rapidly entering chain restaurant purgatory along with Ponderosa Steak Houses, Chi Chi's and Howard Johnsons.
Makes sense...
“CB doesn’t need change, stick with the basics and improve on that.”
*************
Agree. New CB management seems to prefer style over substance. With eating out becoming increasingly expensive, why not focus on quality, value and service? Affordable, efficient and healthy country cooking, that kind of thing.
Nobody who eats there cares about the color of the walls. The store should find out exactly who its market is and build a strategy around incentivizing them to go there.
The redesign plan is superficial and won’t change what needs to change.
+1
Indeed some people believe make changes will self promote themselves and the knee pads help.
I can’t imagine that surveying their customer base would reveal a high importance on the color of the walls. That said, the restaurant facade could be modernized and the bathrooms could use some updating. But in any case, re-branding is meaningless (coming back to your point) without improving the product that people come there for. Don’t disappoint your customers.
Are they really doing DEI sh*t or did they just change the look/logo? I’m not a fan of the new logo, but hadn’t heard of DEI things. What gives?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.