I don’t have a horse in this race. It is interesting that people care enough to hurt the stock’s value.
I’ve never liked having to walk through the store aisles to reach the restaurant. But that’s their branding. A country store with a restaurant in the back.
I’d say nobody is caring to hurt the stock.
It just doesn’t take much selling of a low volume share to tank it if there’s nobody out there poised to buy.
Their business hasn’t exactly been on a roll of late.
This has every sign of a botched rebrand from which they might recover in a year, or might enter a death spiral.
If you want to take a position on that, the good news side is on 12% sale today.
The new one is boring, just my opinion. In one way it’s not different enough, and in another way it’s too different.
No man, you don’t get it. Here, look at it through a MAGA lens.
What a bunch of snowflakes.
That orange could come from a baby’s diaper.
It was less noticeable with more graphics.
I remember from marketing classes that creating a company logo is an art. The Nike Swoosh for example couldn’t be simpler. Motorola is a stylized M.
Unfortunately that article is subscription-only, but I did find this tweet:
They’re claiming it’s the result of DEI somehow. And a conservative activist group is making “civil rights complaints”. Which I can only assume is a complaint that civil rights are being upheld.
It starts with the one white dude on the Cracker Barrel logo.
Next, it’s the camps.
Wake up, Sheeple!!
:rolleyes:
The chain has a deep problem. Their customer base is old, stodgy, and conservative in the “I hate all change” sense of the word. And dying off rapidly.
Management urgently needs to replace the attrition with new and younger blood. Who will naturally be attracted to something other than current-style CB. Or else they’d already be customers. While not chasing off the current customer base. Their stores are concentrated in semirural areas losing population.
That’s a very tall order. Usually capitalism solves that by the “creative destruction” of CB shutting down and an unrelated company (ies) springing up to serve the niche of families & 50-somethings wanting a sit down middle American meal.
Exactly.
“We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
--Republican Senator Lindsey Graham
The demographics are a problem for more than just one political party.
The right wants Cracker Barrel to stay strong and take a stand against “wokeness” by refusing to change anything ever, and if they go out of business it just gives them one more thing to complain about as they play victim games.
Meanwhile, Cracker Barrel is a business and has employees and investors and all that. They have an obligation to try to succeed and that’s going to require change.
Logo simplification has been a trend for years now, often driven by the need for a recognized icon for phone apps. Or, as in this case, as well as the Pringles logo reduced to a handlebar mustache, just because that’s what’s going on.
A restaurant chain with a rural image can modernize without any political motivation.
The older customers that eat at Cracker Barrel and Golden Corral are dying off.
I like Cracker Barrel’s menu. It’s similar to what my grandmother served for large Sunday dinners. That was 50 years ago. 
She always had two meats. Maybe fried chicken and pot roast. Four or more veggie sides and pies. It would cost a fortune today. A dozen or more family members came every Sunday after church.
Personally, I don’t see a need to change the logo but that’s just me. I think I’ve been to a Cracker Barrel twice in my life, both instances while traveling and not having much alternative. It’s… OK. Apparently I’m not the target demographic despite my age being within target range.
Anyhow - whah, whah, whah. What a thing to have a meltdown over. Then again, like I said, not the target audience.
Simplification is fine. Cracker Barrel’s old logo is busy and is begging for it. I just think they could have done a better job. Maybe make the shape of the logo vaguely barrel-shaped or something. An oblong rounded hexagon with all that blank space at the top and bottom seems like a placeholder to use until you come up with something final.
Heck, just make the top and bottom of the logo into curves/arcs; now it looks like a sideways barrel. Very tiny change I think would be an homage to the original.
Those areas will be losing population at an accelerating pace once the hospitals start closing down (both because of illness and deaths lowering the number of people looking for a restaurant meal, and because of younger families being even more anxious to move away).
This is probably a big part of the reason for the change. (Not that MAGA could be expected to figure that out. All they see is a White Man being rejected and pushed aside!)
I’m younger than most on this board (I’m 45). I think the last time I ate at a Cracker Barrel was 20-something years ago, with my parents.
Can you say “Denny’s”? I thought you could. 
Hell, if I was Denny’s I’d be considering suing for trademark infringement. Especially given the overlap in their customer demographics.
I’ve never been in one. I didn’t know until this thread that they were a retail outlet in addition to a restaurant. I’ve seen them from the highway. I was wondering if there were some near me that I just hadn’t noticed. My search revealed this:
Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming all lack a Cracker Barrel
This is true. As a former commercial artist, having designed many logos, I hate the new logo. I’ll go so far as to say it’s objectively bad, in as far as art can be. Or at least it breaks some standard “rules” of advertising. There is way too much space around the letters and the edge of the badge. And though it might be fine for app icons, the lack of a border or containing color around the edges tends to allow your eyes to wander. Plus the badge shape doesn’t related to anything - unless they expect it to read as a barrel (in which case they have failed, as evidenced by this comment above):
It doesn’t read well as one to me either staring at this page and it certainly wouldn’t if I was driving by at 60 MPH.
I can’t speak to the MAGA aspect, or woke-ness or white old men angle but strictly speaking on the art as a selling tool itself, it’s bad.
Well, unlike the hipsters and puristas on this board, I like Cracker Barrel. And we have eight in Phoenix metro area, which is far from rural.
But…we haven’t been going in several years, because they seem to have embraced the MAGAts. Maybe if this drives them away, it will be OK to go again.