Jackson Jambalaya

"Yes, the point of going to Cracker Barrel is like you're going to Grandma's. Now it's like you're going to her nursing home. " Tweet by Joe Perrone

The good news is that the newly redesigned Cracker Barrel logo doesn’t really qualify as “woke.” The bad news is that it is painfully generic and boring, and you can’t begrudge anybody who liked the restaurant chain from recoiling at a redesign that removes the sitting grandfatherly figure and leaves Generic Country Font Number Seven atop some half-melted Velveeta.

I might not be that far off with the Velveeta metaphor. The company’s press release stated the following:

“Its more popular menu offerings like farm fresh scrambled eggs and buttermilk biscuits even serve as inspiration behind the hues of a refreshed color palette featured in the new campaign. Anchored in Cracker Barrel’s signature gold and brown tones, the updated visuals will appear across menus and marketing collateral, including the fifth evolution of the brand’s logo, which is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all.”

This comes after the chain redesigned its interiors to give them a “brighter, more contemporary look,” which some fans of the restaurant didn’t welcome at all. The chain’s interiors were well known for dark woods and the walls being covered in near-antique signs and tchotchkes, designed to emulate a combination of your grandmother’s kitchen and the back of your grandfather’s garage. The new look is indeed lighter and brighter; one person who liked it said, “It’s like Joanna Gaines [of HGTV] was here.” Of course, this makes the interior of a Cracker Barrel look a lot more like most other restaurants out there.

You might be asking, “Who cares?” But this was a big enough deal to Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino to announce the changes on ABC’s Good Morning America Tuesday.....

Note that this isn’t really a struggling brand. Cracker Barrel is currently the 34th biggest restaurant chain in the United States, bigger than the Cheesecake Factory, Five Guys, and Waffle House....

People are resistant to change in general, but it is understandable that they’re particularly resistant to change in a restaurant chain whose appeal has always included an element of nostalgia. And perhaps there is an ideological or sensibility aspect to the reactions; the people who are most inclined to dislike sudden drastic changes are the ones inclined to try to conserve things they like.

Cracker Barrel isn’t supposed to be “modernized,” and it isn’t supposed to be hip or cool or edgy. The bland new logo — which looks like it could be an app on your phone — imitates lots of other corporate logos by shifting toward abstract minimalism. (Mr. Pringle doesn’t even have an oval for a face anymore, he’s just some floating disembodied eyes, eyebrows, and a mustache, a sort of Eldritch Lovecraftian horror staring at you unnervingly as you eat your chips.)...

Masino was named president and CEO of Cracker Barrel in July 2023, so she’s been in that role for a bit more than two years. She was previously the president of Taco Bell international from 2020 to 2023, and before that, the president of the taco chain’s North American operations. Prior to that, she’d served as corporate president at toymaker Mattel, Sprinkles Cupcakes, and other roles at Starbucks.

We’ve seen this happen a lot at a lot of brands: The appetite to attract new customers spurs the company to change the product, but in the process, the changes drive away the existing customers who liked the product just the way it was.

Cracker Barrel had a very clear identity. As Mary Katharine Ham put it, “This seems almost like intentional sabotage. No one wants a minimalist Cracker Barrel. We want Hoarders: Southern Grandma Edition. If it doesn’t look like Meemaw and Peepaw’s, with the only concession to modernity is removing ashtrays, I’m out.” I also liked the comment, “The point of going to Cracker Barrel is like you’re going to Grandma’s. Now it’s like you’re going to her nursing home.”

A new CEO has arrived and is attempting to modernize the look of the brand. Now, it doesn’t look all that different from First Watch.

Much was made of the sudden dive in Cracker Barrel's stock price that immediately took place Thursday after the announcement was made. The stock price opened Thursday at $58.80 per share and plummeted to 50.77 but 11:30 AM. However, it rallied to 54.91 by market close. It rose slightly in after hours trading and closed at $54.40 yesterday. 

Although no company likes losing $4 per share in one day, Cracker Barrel's stock price a year ago was $40 per share.  However, the company reached a share price of $71 in July. 

The Taco Bell Queen laughed off the criticism and said the company is moving full speed ahead with its new look.  

Kingfish note: It appears Cracker Barrel is going to do what McDonald's did to its restaurants.  You know, those grown and gray buildings resembling prisons.