The woke writing was on the wall when Cracker Barrel chose the “Big Apple” for the rebranding celebration of the restaurant.
There are no Cracker Barrels in the People’s Republic of New York City.
The rebranding, led by new CEO Julie Felss Masino, includes a change in logos from the down home charm of the Old Country Store to something that appears to have been pulled from the back of a cheap clip art book.
Revolver News noted: “But it’s not just the logo. Cracker Barrel’s entire look has changed. You’re no longer sitting on somebody’s cozy southern porch. Now you’re stuck eating fried chicken in that played-out modern farmhouse look that’s taken over most suburban homes in America.”
“Cracker Barrel is done,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote in an Aug. 21 analysis. “Woke executives killed it, wrapped the corpse in a rainbow flag, and then made it do a little puppet show in New York City for the entertainment of all their woke little friends.”
Shares of Cracker Barrel fell $4.22, or 7.2%, to $54.80 in Thursday trading, a loss of $94 million in market value. The stock had dipped to a low of $50.27 earlier in the day, representing a loss of almost $200 million in its capitalization.
“But the real reason Cracker Barrel has been struggling,” Davis noted, “is that its service and food quality nosedived after Covid, and instead of fixing that, the company and its woke executives decided to go full Bud Light and taste the rainbow and dare its customers to object.
“They stopped bringing you biscuits and cornbread as a matter of course, then they shrunk them. The food started to taste and look reheated instead of freshly prepared, and the service got slower and sloppier. Everyone who’s been a loyal customer over the years has experienced this. It’s undeniable.”
“Those are admittedly tricky problems to fix, especially given how service quality everywhere has sucked after Covid. It’s hard to find wait staff and cooks who always show up when they’re supposed to and take pride in their work.
“Cracker Barrel executives refused to address those problems — problems that any customer would’ve pointed out had they bothered to ask. Instead, the executives went all-in on woke alphabet BS: DEI this, BLM that, LGBT whatever.
“Because that’s what people want at an old country diner: gay race communism shoved in their faces.”
