Anyone who’s driven south through the U.S. from eastern Canada over the past half century or so knows Cracker Barrel, the southern-themed restaurant chain found along the Interstates. Officially named Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., the restaurant and retail outlet plays on U.S. nostalgia, resembling an old-fashioned country store. Such is it’s profile that the chain has even attracted the attention of Donald Trump in recent days – for better or worse.
With down-home food – we still dream of the fried chicken, chicken-fried steak and pecan pie – the Barrels have served as a requisite stop for road-trip travellers, having grown from a single location in Tennessee in 1969 to more than 660 restaurants in 43 states.
But in recent years, the brand began showing cracks, and like its namesake barrels that transported soda crackers until boxes replaced them, Cracker Barrel needed to change.
The restaurant chain’s new CEO, Julie Felss Masino, laid out the argument to investors last year: Cracker Barrel’s customer traffic was down 16% compared to 2019. Research showed consumers thought the brand fell short of competitors in essential ways, from the quality of the food to value and convenience.
“We are not leading in any area. We will change that,” Masino said.
But last month, Cracker Barrel’s attempted revamp hit a wall. The company saw severe backlash from customers over its plans to modernize and simplify its nostalgic logo – including from President Trump.
So, Cracker Barrel reversed course and said its old logo would remain. It features an overall-clad man – said to represent Uncle Herschel, a relative of Cracker Barrel’s founder – leaning on a barrel, with the words “Old Country Store” underneath.
Investors cheered the move and Cracker Barrel’s stock price immediately rose 8%, which was even higher than its closing price on Aug. 15, before it announced the new logo.
Here’s how Lebanon, Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel got to this point and where it might go from here:
Transformation plan
Cracker Barrel hired Masino, a longtime Taco Bell and Starbucks executive, in July 2023. She was chosen for her record as an innovator, with the hope that she would attract new customers to Cracker Barrel, which operates 660 restaurants in 43 states.
Masino introduced updated menu items, like Hashbrown Casserole Shepherd’s Pie, to increase Cracker Barrel’s dinnertime traffic. She also started remodeling the company’s dark, antique-filled restaurants, lightening the walls and installing more comfortable seating.
The changes appeared to be helping. Cracker Barrel’s fiscal third quarter, which ended May 2, was the fourth consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth for the company. Same-store sales, a key metric for restaurants, measures sales at locations open at least one year.
Logo misstep
Richard Wilke, a former executive at the brand consultancy Lippincott who helped lead rebrands for companies like Delta Air Lines and Walmart, said Cracker Barrel’s existing logo is too detailed and fussy for the digital age, when companies have to think about how their brand appears in a smartphone app.
But Wilke said Cracker Barrel’s new logo, featuring just the company’s name in brown letters on a gold background, lacked character. The logo’s rollout also seemed like an afterthought. In a press release about new fall menu items released Aug. 18, the company mentioned the new logo in the fourth paragraph.
The approach Walmart took in 2008 provides a better model for a successful rebrand, according to Wilke. Walmart wanted to broaden its appeal, especially to shoppers in urban areas. It redesigned stores, slowly adding a new blue-and-yellow colour scheme and yellow asterisk symbol. It trained employees on the meaning behind its new slogan, “Save money. Live better.”
After a year or more, the company finally introduced its new logo, which added the yellow asterisk and dropped the hyphen from Wal-Mart in order to de-emphasize the discount term “Mart.”
“The logo change was almost a natural conclusion to this multi-year transformation,” Wilke said. “I suspect that if we did it in the same sequence as Cracker Barrel, we would have gotten the same noise.”
Nostalgia factor
Cracker Barrel acknowledged that it should have done a better job with the new logo’s rollout.
The company said it should have emphasized all the things that would remain the same about Cracker Barrel restaurants: the rocking chairs on the front porches, fireplaces in the dining rooms and vintage Americana and antiques scattered throughout.
The company said it would also continue to honour Uncle Herschel on its menu and on items sold in the country-style stores attached to its restaurants. But it was too late, and Cracker Barrel pulled its new logo the next day.
Next steps
Thomas Murphy, a professor of practice at Clark University School of Business, said returning to the original logo was a “positive course correction” given the intensity of fans’ response. Now, Murphy said, Cracker Barrel should reinforce the message that it’s not moving away from its values or heritage.
Murphy said Cracker Barrel can continue to “refresh” its stores, making them brighter and more welcoming to younger customers. But it doesn’t really need to “rebrand,” he said, which would indicate a bigger change in direction or purpose.
Wilke agrees that Cracker Barrel should stick with the old logo but continue to revamp its restaurants in the short term. Eventually, the company will have to adopt a simpler logo, he said, but it should design one that retains more of the brand’s heritage.
Political fallout
One difference with past corporate transformations – including a 2014 rebrand by Southwest Airlines to attract more business customers or Dunkin’ Donuts 2019 renaming to Dunkin’ – is the more divisive political climate.
Cracker Barrel caught heat not only from Donald Trump Jr. but from the president himself. Trump said via Truth Social that Cracker Barrel “should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before.”
Later, Trump celebrated Cracker Barrel’s decision to drop its new logo.
Wilke said he wishes both Republicans and Democrats would stay out of brand decisions like Cracker Barrel’s. Rebrands are almost always about trying to attract new customers without alienating old ones, he said.
“This isn’t a political story,” he said. “If politicians now turn every company logo design update into a debate about being ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke,’ we are headed into a damaging new era for corporate branding.”
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