Cracker Barrel Restoring Its Classic Logo
It was an issue that united everyone.
Cracker Barrel faced intense backlash from everyone over its new bland logo.
Well…the outrage worked. Uncle Herschel is coming back.
We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain.
At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm… pic.twitter.com/C32QMLOeq0
— Cracker Barrel (@CrackerBarrel) August 26, 2025
A Fox Business investigation discovered that a top Cracker Barrel investor warned new CEO Julie Felss Masino not to make any changes back in May 2024:
Over the next months, Masino and her board of directors dismissed at least four warnings by a top investor, Sardar Biglari, that the rebranding was “obvious folly,” filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal.
“Cracker Barrel is not a broken brand but it has a broken board,” he wrote, in a scathing seven-page letter to shareholders.
He laid out his criticisms in a 120-page slide-deck presentation with the title, “CRACKER BARREL IS IN CRISIS,” next to the company’s longtime logo of an old man in overalls leaning on a barrel – a logo that Masino would wipe out, unbeknownst to Biglari at the time.
Biglari is no fool. People call him a bully or evil genius for a reason.
The slide presentation noted how Biglari turned around Steak ‘n Shake in 2010.
In other words, listen to the man! The seven-page letter included criticism of Cracker Barrel’s DEI plans:
By Oct. 8, 2024, Biglari had had enough. In his blistering seven-page letter to shareholders, he warned them about the board’s “obvious folly,” greenlighting Masino and “her new transformation plan.” He criticized the board’s alleged dysfunction and mismanagement.
“Cracker Barrel is in perilous times,” he wrote.
He laid out stark numbers. In 2011, Cracker Barrel reported $167 million in operating income on revenues of $2.4 billion. By 2023, after $1.4 billion in cumulative capital expenditures, operating income had fallen to $121 million, even as revenues climbed past $3.4 billion.
“…the problem lies not in the seating but in getting more people to sit in it,” he warned, continuing, “We do not believe changing the furniture and altering the décor are going to change the Company’s trajectory or solve the Company’s underlying problem of declining traffic.”
Everyone laughed at him, turned their backs on him. The shareholders sided with management, elected the 10 recommended nominees, which included Masino.
The company proceeded with plans to remodel the restaurant and store, refine the menu, and update the logo.
Except…the customers and market hated it all. Hindsight is 20/20:
The backlash was swift. Investor Chris Wunder, CEO of Leap Brands, an executive recruiting company with expertise in the restaurant industry, compared the rebranding to “taking a vintage Chevy and installing clown rims and a neon paint job.” He said flatly: “Maybe we should have let Sardar Biglari and Biglari Holdings Inc. take over.”
Maybe Cracker Barrel should do just that.
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Comments
They could have gone the other way and changed their name to toasted bread barrel to avoid being un-PC. Glad they didn’t.
Their food has still gone the way of Olive Garden/Red Lobster (generic nuked junk) in most locations, so I won’t be eating there anyways.
Wife and I went to a local one a few weeks ago for the first time in several years. The people were fine, in fact the Maître De was over the top friendly and helpful. The problem was the food. I had chicken fried steak and eggs, the wife had pancakes and bacon. To say it was average would be generous and we both got sick. Not from salmonella or anything but queasy and nauseous which was a far cry from what we remembered. Not sure why but we won’t ever go back. We also didn’t see what the big deal about the store was. Overpriced knick Knacks and doo dads.
I used to love this place on road trips.
Since I have given up road trips, I have not been there for at least 20 years. Back then the food was great.
My favorite was the piping hot biscuits.
I just saw a you tube video, where the customer hit biscuits against the table. It was the same as hitting a brick.
Unless they fix their kitchen, the doomed to fail.
Good quality food is the business of any restaurant and can be a significant driver of costs. Experienced restaurant cooks also drive costs but are obviously key to the overall quality that brings butts into the seats. Everything else is just marketing flair. If top management focuses on excellence with these two critical components, the marketing is easy. It’s tough to run a business where the food is processed in a centralized location to be reheated on site, even though the costs of food and cooks is cut, but when customers notice, all the window dressing changes are meaningless.
Crakkker Barrel works too
The obvious question is whether they are going to reverse their other changes [decor, food quality and portions, and political activity].
Subotai Bahadur
“Innovation” is a bad word in some commercial areas. The “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken” is lost on the “constantly new” mindset. “New Coke” should have been a harbinger but it wasn’t. Trading a loyal clientele for a woke transient fickle mob was and is nuts. Unless a top-down purge is in the offing, no trust can be regained.
Agreed. Innovation needs a catalyst of greater importance than “I need to look relevant to keep my job.”
No offense, but the “loyal clientele” wasn’t eating at Cracker Barrel. The “loyal clientele” of the elderly was losing 10% a year since the end of the pandemic. Overall, since the end of the pandemic, Cracker Barrel was losing over 6% of their overall clientele each year,
Changes – including arguably a rebranding – needed to be made.
This is just an example of horrible rebranding.
The problem is that the chain had moved away from what its customers had previously appreciated, and it failed to emphasize those characteristics in its advertising.
It did not need a rebrand, but a return.
Cracker Barrel was hemorrhaging customers as far back as 2010. I am not sure that you can simply tell consumers “we are returning…” because the question is “returning to what? The stuff we walked away from before?”
Cracker Barrel needed to focus on better food (which they are as part of the failed rebranding and have gotten positive reviews,) look at prices and portion sizes for their customers, and demanding better quality from their staff.
Those are all positive things that need to be addressed. As part of that, they can also rebrand to a slightly updated logo and branding. That rebranding – even something small – can indicate to customers “we listened, and we have changed.”
Cracker Barrel was failing from years ago. They had to do something. What they did was not good.
My mom and elder sis used to love Cracker Barrel – I liked it myself.
After the Covid shutdowns the food was noticeably…. different.
I suspect they had tried to maintain profits during the period of customers shunning restaurants by trimming both their menu size and their menu quality. And they never reverted back.
When my family started eating out again we were so disappointed by the changes that we just stopped making CB a regular thing.
I’m glad they’re abandoning abandoning the CB logo and decor – but until they’re prepared to restore the food quality they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship.
The funny thing is that their stock is up over 30% year over year. This can be explained, I think, by the hammering they took during Covid. I don’t see how they climb much higher with the food quality in the tank and now people realizing what that dimwit woke CEO Capt Glasses is doing to it with the DEI nonsense. The board needs to get rid of her and her fellow woke marketing genius that is leading them down the path of irrelevance but it seems the board is all in with them. Someone needs a hostile takeover and clean house. Reversing the logo is surprising in that it happened too fast but the damage has been done. The customer base that actually frequents Cracker Barrel has been alienated in that ladies drive to appeal to her friends on the virtue signaling left that sneer at places like that and will never step foot in one. I predict that they will languish in mediocrity before going Red Lobster.
Take a look at the linked slide deck from Biglari in the article. Branding is not their problem. Mismanagement over the past 5-10 years is the problem. The board did not have the right experience and the CEO is the classic example of job-hopper with limited real relevant skills to the company. “I was CEO at such and such Fortune 500, so of course I’m right for this company…”
The food is the problem at cracker barrel, not the logo, or number of tchotchkes on the wall. The last time we were there the green beans tasted like they came straight from a can.
They should have spend 700 million sourcing better ingredients and delivering fresher food faster instead of changing their logo something remarkably boring.
To be fair, they didn’t spend 700 mil on the logo. They spent 700 mil on a bunch of changes including some menu updates that at least have the suggestion of improving their biggest problem. Whether they are worth it or not? I’m skeptical, especially after the logogate.
Could have out the old logo inside the new logo. Not a total loss.
The fact of the matter is that while many are blaming Cracker Barrel for “go woke – go broke,” that is not the whole situation.
The “go woke” part happened starting in 2024. Yet prior to that, Cracker Barrel had lost 10% of its core market (elderly people) and 6.75% of overall customers each year from 2021 (the end of the pandemic.)
Cracker Barrel did not address its core issues of higher prices, lower portion sizes, lack of health standards, and a lack of quality help at all levels of the restaurant.
The rebranding itself has nothing really to do with “going woke,” The chain, like so many chains, needs new branding.
Take a look at the history of MdDonalds through the years, from rebranding their logo, to rebranding the exterior of their buildings, to rebranding the interiors.
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-company/who-we-are/our-history.html
The rebranding itself of Cracker Barrel is horrible. The new design of the logo has too much negative space and lacks “soul.” It lacks any connection to the past and offers nothing of a future. The new logo is not clean, inviting, or anything. It is an abomination.
(It should be noted that while the original post talks about how Sardar Biglari turned Steak n’ Shake in 2010, one of the things the chain did was to modify their logo to a more modern looking one. Changing a logo is not a bad thing in and of itself. They also changed decor in the restaurants to be more modern looking, while still having a tie to the past “diner” look.)
Cracker Barrel’s interior rebranding had no connection to the past. It was as if the company was trying to open a new restaurant – not changing the old to reflect new decor tastes of people.
Cracker Barrel is not the only company to make a horrible choice when trying to rebrand. This article shows 35 companies / brands that failed when the changed their logos:
https://klintmarketing.com/35-rebranding-fails/
For all the people complaining about Cracker Barrel’s rebranding, where were they eating because it was not in Cracker Barrel.
The bottom line is that while Cracker Barrel going woke last year can be a topic of discussion, going “woke” didn’t have much to do with the failure of rebranding Cracker Barrel.
Whatever individual or group of people – including the designers – who approved the new design and branding should be summarily fired. Kaput. See ya. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.
Cracker Barrel needed to change.
This was not the way to do it.
The last time I ate at Cracker Barrel (last year), the service was slow and when the food finally came it was barely edible. So my wife (who used to love the place) and I haven’t been back since.
The logo and table layout are irrelevant. It failed at the one thing a restaurant is supposed to do.
Dumping the new logo is just an effort to reduce the stock losses.
They have no apparent plan to fix the REAL problems; mediocre food and bad service. The menu doesn’t need to be revamped; they need to stop serving microwaved generic crap.
They don’t need to change the decor; they need to hire servers who know that happy customers tip well and come back.
When you put B-school graduates in charge of anything, they will eff it up, because they believe any effort to maximize profits by cutting costs and substituting poor quality will always be the right course.
Isn’t eliminating the “microaved generic crap” revamping the menu? Or at least part of a revamped menu?
For the most part, people have moved away from the heavy food for which Cracker Barrel was known. There are lighter, tastier versions of dishes of menu classics such as chicken fried steak.
If you want to bring customers back that have walked away, and they are telling you your food is outdated, you either listen or die.
As for the logo, it too is outdated. The colors, instead of being bright and vibrant, are muted and almost depressing. Even brightening the colors may help because brown and dark gold are colors that make people hungry.
Home cooking is never outdated.
I too ate at Cracker Barrel last year, in Texas, and it was indeed awful
If you cook good food, they will comw
It can be.
Even home cooking has gotten away from lard heavy dishes which was a staple of Cracker Barrel.
You can make new dishes that are reminiscent of “old home cooking” that are healthier, and taste fresher than what was eaten 57 years ago when Cracker Barrel was founded.
Even in restaurants today, you don’t see staples from the 1970’s of dishes covered with sauces and the overuse of parsley as a garnishment. Restaurant and menus change. They have to.
It is not a bad thing to have updated dishes that remind people of home cooking but are lower in calories and healthier which is what people – even the elderly – want.
You don’t know good home cooking apparently
The major shareholders were as stupid as management, voting for this woke idiocy.
Reminds me of the late 80’s, when Chrysler management proudly declared “We don’t have a quality problem. We have a perception problem.” So the idiots cut the Engineering budget, and increased the Marketing budget.
Tip of the iceberg on their rebranding and DEI problems.
So they’ve put that one snowflake back into position, but literally everything else is still a complete disaster.
This won’t save them.
Also, listening to DJT recommending that they go back to the old logo may cost them what few customers with TDS they did have.
No great loss.
.
So, the cracker and the barrel are both back.
I went to a Cracker Barrel in Texas about a year ago and was very disappointed. The food took about 45 minutes to come, and was lukewarm, and not very tasty. My first time at a Cracker Barrel, and not inclined to go back. My experience seems consistent with the Biglari analysis– a failing business– one not fixable with cosmetic changes. A new logo and furniture won’t improve the food or service. All the fuss about the logo won’t help save a poorly managed restaurant chain that suffers declining attendance, and lack of income. As an investor, I wouldn’t touch the stock. Restaurants have a life cycle. I’ve seen many good ones go bad and go out of business. Moreover, eating out while fun and convenient is not healthy. I’m about to have a greenhouse built, and grow a lot of my own produce. Then I will know what I’m eating. My dogs get high quality food too. All prepared from basic ingredients.
Every time a stupid corporation does this woke two-step, they alienate the normies by going woke, then alienate the wokies by reversing themselves, without necessarily re-attracting the normies, who now are conscious of how little the corporation really thinks of them.
Reinforces the “go woke, go broke” idea. Neither group is very forgiving. Before going woke, wokies typically won’t HATE the company, just not prefer it. Going woke this like takes supporters and ambivalents and turns them both into detractors.
“When you put B-school graduates in charge of anything, they will eff it up, because they believe any effort to maximize profits by cutting costs and substituting poor quality will always be the right course.”
Bingo. People in charge that graduated from woke marketing programs who have no loyalty to the product or even ever tried it before being put in charge. So far they have been surviving on customer loyalty and “it used to be great, we went there all the time” much like Sears. The problem is the business model the woke CEO and board seem intent on inflicting on the company customers be damned in an appeal to their friends who will never eat there. The DEI and LGBTQIAEIEIO stuff flew under the radar up to this point but now the declining food quality combined with this marketing disaster can’t be hidden anymore. Notice they said nothing about the remodeling of the insides. They seem intent on destroying the brand for some reason and when they are done I believe that woke chick with the ironic glasses will move on to another job. Hell, that woman who destroyed Bud Lite got a job in Europe.
I suspect that the issue is ‘turning tables’. Diners at CB tend to linger which limits how many diners can be served. Some of that is offset with revenue from the ‘store’. In a way it isn’t all bad b/c those same lingering diners are also more frequent diners at CB.
That said the food quality has declined. The service is inconsistent. The wait time from kitchen is way too long. The last couple times I hit a CB they didn’t have their signature biscuits or cornbread to bring to the table..and that kinda sums it up. Those biscuits/cornbread go to nearly every diner so an inability to manage the kitchen to keep them flowing is an indicator of decline.
Maybe. But the fact of the matter is that Cracker Barrel has been losing customers over the last decade and a half. While turning over tables is important, it is not as if the restaurants have to worry about finding seats for people. Patrons are not returning to Cracker Barrel.
Yep. Those are the real problems. The CEO said they are addressing those issues, as well as adding more healthy menu items based on old classics.
But you are 100% correct in that you have to address the core operations of a business.
You can then rebrand as a type of “grand reopening.” The rebranding heralds your (hopefully) successful efforts to make the restaurant what people want in today’s market with a nod to the past and classic dishes.
This “rebranding” put the cart before the horse. The logo is horrendous. The interiors are horrible with no nod or acknowledgement to the past.
I predict that for Cracker Barrel to survive, they will have to improve standards and all the things you say and then rebrand – even slightly. If they don’t, people who don’t know about the changes for the better will think “same ol’ Cracker Barrel” and drive past.
Now, bring back Sambo’s!
not to belabor the point, but:
Years ago there was a drugstore luncheonette in every little village where the cook made everything in front of you – and you knew it was fresh – even if he didn’t cook your eggs exactly the way you wanted them.
Today you have a cook who doesn’t understand English with service people who bring you food “out of the back” who don’t know how to keep themselves clean.
Feh!
the race hustlers are also satisfied
but the ceo is just another woke lefty who wants to tell wht males to die off
While they’re trying to bring the business back from their self induced decline, they can make the dining rooms less noisy. All the hard surfaces reflect and amplify noise. One screaming, undisciplined toddler can and does make the entire dining experience intolerable and encourages diners to avoid the place in the future.
And don’t even get me started on the repulsive junk (to be generous) they sell in the stores.
.
Fighting Irish leprechaun devotees have hope.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRRofVucxPVyA78e6N0NSvriL37DvzsqA5hw&s
Nothing like falling stock prices to get a company’s board to listen to public opinion!
Cracker Barrel began losing customers right around the same time they started lowering the quality of the food they put on their tables. I remember 100% pure maple syrup & sausage that didn’t make me sick.