When your whole schtick is nostalgia, but all the folks who remember the things you reference are now dead or otherwise unable to come to your restaurants, you either need to change your schtick, or you need to tap into the nostalgia of a younger generation. There aren’t as many Amos & Andy and Howdy Doody fans on the highways these days.
Or just be happy with the niche. Not everything needs to be global.
But its niche is disappearing, so it either finds a new niche, or it goes out of business. Its niche was always “middle-aged people’s childhood memories,” but how many of today’s middle-aged people grew up listening to radio shows and watching old men sitting around cracker barrels?
Hell, I AM middle-aged, and one of my grandfathers was a sharecropper who eventually started his own corner store, so I SHOULD be exactly their demographic… but my childhood memories are of Charlie’s Angels, Radio Shack computers and Run DMC. Their niche is almost nonexistent now.
but how many of today’s middle-aged people grew up listening to radio shows
THE Shadow knows! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Am middle aged too, grew up on nerdy old shit. Don’t forget to stock up on Blue Anthracite coal and Chesterfields!
Radium water or nothing! They’ll take it away over my dead body!!
Old and new logo for those interested
They removed the Cracker and the Barrel from Cracker Barrel!😱
I’ve noticed no one seems to see that the new background is in the shape of a barrel
It’s still cracker erasure!
“We can’t afford to keep making elaborate signs”
New logo sucks. Racists and wokists should be able to agree on this.
Every food place wants to look generic and sterile now. And their logos reflect that
the West has fallen 😞
The newer logo makes them look like a fucking bank
Wait. Is it called Cracker Barrel cuz the logo is a cracker leaning on a barrel? Never put that together.
No its a barrel of hard tack (aka crackers). Supposed to be old timely grocery store version of a water cooler.
I love this running gag.
Hard tack is absolutely not crackers, lol. You will chip a tooth trying to bite into it. Best to soak in your coffee first to soften up.
Best improvised weapon available. Nobody expects a hard tack to the head
They really are like bricks.
Crackers used to be shipped in barrels.
Naturally they got really nasty really fast. It wasn’t until they invented sealed packaging we more or less have now that they became tolerable. It was kinda a bad thing to name a restaurant after.
I assume it’s a Barrelof Crackers, but I dunno.
Ootl, what happened?
Cracker barrel changed their logo to some generic corporate thing and Republicans are mad about it for the wrong reasons
They think it’s a woke issues for some reason, when really it’s just corporate slop
Does anyone remember the last meltdown republicans had about Cracker Barrel? They added vegetarian sausage to the menu, and I think it made Tucker Carlson?
I’m addition to removing the cartoon old man and barrel iconography, Cracker Barrel is reducing the amount of random junk on the walls, and painting the bare wooden walls white. (Select stores only, not everything gets remodeled all at once). Probably they’re trying to appeal more to a younger generation or something.
Any word yet if this is private equity stripping the copper or are they just morons?
It’s a publicly traded company, so no, this isn’t private equity bleeding a corpse. They seem to be trying to modernize and broaden their appeal to get out of an extended post-covid slump. Per Wikipedia:
In May 2024, Cracker Barrel revealed that 16% of their customer base had not returned since 2020.
Say what you will, but those 84 people stayed because there’s no better place for microwaved insults to Southern cuisine this side of the Walmart frozen dinners aisle.
I ate there once and the food was terrible. They should work on that.
because a disproportionate amount of their clientele don’t believe in vaccines, and fought against wearing wasks… wonder where that percentage went?
Given it’s private equity, my guess would be both.
painting the bare wooden walls white
Welp, they just lost my business (not that I’d been there in years before this anyway…).
Painting real wood (other than maybe pine or poplar) is like painting brick: just don’t do it!
My nostalgia for the brand is the nostalgia they showed when I was a kid; old tin ads on the wall for various sodas and candies and motor oil or whatnot. We used to stop there on road trips when I was a kid because the bathrooms would usually be pretty clean and wandering the store part would let us stretch our legs a bit. Sometimes we’d get some old-fashioned candy or gum or soda. Sometimes we’d actually eat at the restaurant side. Us kids would only ever get pancakes, no matter the time of day.
I can’t remember the last time I stopped at one now. Most of our road trips are heading north to see my wife’s parents in Canada. I’ve never noticed them existing north of southern Virginia and that comes up fairly early in our drive. My wife tried eating at one once before we got married but it sounds like what she got wasn’t good, especially the green beans. I’m not sure how much I’d trust the food that wasn’t on their all-day breakfast menu. It’s harder to mess up breakfast.
I’m not saying there’s not a potential market for a place that appeals to nostalgia of the ’70s–’90s, maybe the music, arcade games, pop culture references, Crystal Pepsi, but it would need to be a completely different brand even if it came from the same company.
So to appeal to a younger generation they made a minimalist logo and are removing any trace of personality? I mean, their personality wasn’t my thing (haven’t been in many, many years) but I have no idea why they couldn’t try new personality instead of no personality.
Alternatively, have they tried making their food good? That might work.
“The terrible generic food is too expensive to make better. Change the sign and paint the walls.”
- The CEO, probably
Like if they did a Steampunk theme, that’d work
I don’t know if it would work, but I’d definitely show up for it.
I’m in favor of a good food theme.
Ewww… I’m so fucking tired of everything being a boring white
Homie and his barrel got bounced from the logo.
Who cares. I got food poisoning from them twice, separate locations and years. The second bout of food poisoning sent me to the hospital, but also indirectly lead me to coming out as transgender. So thanks but no thanks, your food is disgusting.
thats a story id love to hear
So, can someone explain this to non USAians?
cracker barrel had a logo with racist undertones, like the other logos above it. it has recently been retired, much to the outrage of conservatives.
It’s a guy leaning against a barrel, what racial undertones are there?
idk, ask the nazis that are mad it got switched out.
The Nazis are always mad at any change. Just because they’re angry, doesn’t mean the change is good. Unfortunately, now what should be a discussion about the sterilization of all branding now got wrapped up in the culture wars. If McDonald’s had waited until now to disappear the Ronald McDonald mascot, the Nazis would be complaining about that too.
Okay just because a racist is mad doesn’t mean that what they’re mad about is necessarily racist.
Yeah close look, it doesn’t look like a typical black caricature, like Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima. It just looks like a older guy, sitting in a chair, with a barrel being used like a table. This would have described half my, white, family. Racists just think anything “old timey” changing is woke, because woke is what they don’t like. However, the company has a historical problem with overt racism, and most of their customer base has a lot of racists in it’s composition. So fuck them, they deserve to go under.
Ultimately this is just rage bait profiteering, and a distraction from the real hell going on.
What racist undertones? He looks like a detailed Simpsons character.
All the other logos have controversies, except cream of wheat.
They got rid of the barrel and the cracker!
Is that native American lady caricature holding a big stack of pancakes?
Land O Lakes butter.
Got rid of the native, but kept the land… They didn’t think that one through did they?
Par for the course…
Just the biggest stick of butter ever?
She’s holding the box of butter, which has her picture on it… Where she’s holding the same box for infinite recursion
I’m not a huge fan of either logo tbh, they could have kept a bit more texture on the barrel
Would everybody feel better if we just said that AI redesigned the logo?
/s
Who checks notes cares?
I honestly thought they went out of business. The only one I might see on a regular basis closed and I didn’t see any on a recent short road trip. Whatever, their food was mediocre anyway.
Wait, so Republicans are woke now?
I love that this is the faux news rage o’ the day. They literally can’t come up with anything else because they’re basking in all of their goals being satisfied.
