The black eyed peas are typically cooked with ham in a tomato base. It’s a delicious way to finish off the Christmas ham.
I’m curious to find out how this is woke’s fault.
As someone who spent a good portion of my life in the South I have to say that black eyed peas with (depending on your background and economic status) ham/hamhocks/hog jowel for New Year’s is a cherished tradition whether you’re Black, white, rich, poor, urban or rural.
It’s a travesty for a restaurant that pretends to be devoted to down-home Southern cooking not to have it on the menu.
The woke board of directors felt that “black eyed” was a discriminatory term since it doesn’t include all the colors of eyes 
In actuality, it might be an indication that the board doesn’t really understand Southern cooking and traditions. If they think it’s just a random bean soup, they may not think it’s worth the trouble of having on the menu at the new year.
Holy crap. I’m a Texan, and we had black eyed peas and cornbread yesterday. For a chain with this theming, eliminating that from the menu on that day is practically brand sabotage.
I get the feeling LJS has been circling the drain for years. I’ve not seen any new locations in a number of years and the number of locations in Arkansas have dwindled in that time. I make it a point to go to the LJS in Little Rock once or twice each year because I do like their batter. It’s pretty expensive though, for the same price I’d spend on a shrimp platter at LJS I can go to a local Cajun place and order their shrimp platter. I suspect LJS is not long for the world.
Does the board really decide what goes on the menu? I’d think they’d be concerned with other things.
You’re not wrong.
They’ve been sold twice in the last 15 years, and according to Wikipedia, they’ve shrunk from over 1100 locations in 2015 to just under 500 today.
They’ve been “off trend” for years, due to the high fat and sodium content, and fried nature, of their primary menu items.
Imagine what would happen if Tim Horton’s took Timbits off their menu. 
I’m disappointed in Long John Silver’s. This was their opportunity to be creative with their logo, and put a chicken head on a fish’s body. Or vice versa.
A fish’s body on a chicken head?
Great…poor Jessica Simpson’s going to be even more confused now.
Cracker Barrel used Southern Nostalgia for their logo and menu. All the stuff on the walls were antiques.
It’s no different than opening a diner with photos of Elvis and women in poodle skirts on the walls. Black & white tiles on the floor and a jukebox in the corner. 50’s nostalgia
It’s not surprising Cracker Barrel customers are upset at changes. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It’s how people imagine how things used to be.
I’m not from the South, but I’ve served black eyed peas for new years a few times, just because it’s a fun tradition and they are tasty. I think most everyone in America is at least familiar with the tradition.
What a bizarre choice for them to make. Maybe someone with leverage wants them to fail. Sometimes there’s money in tanking a brand, right?
I honestly was not despite having a branch of the family from Virginia/Maryland and my mother having been a rabid devotee of the fried green tomatoes and tomato-gravy grits of her childhood.
But regardless, enough people are. Blandly ignorant corporate bean counters shitting on their own well-established brand of marketed nostalgia is Shooting Yourself in the Foot 101. Whoever is on the team is running the company needs to turn in their MBAs and spend a month working as a server or cook at a branch somewhere.
Commenting on disappointing first fiscal quarter revenue, Cracker Barrel’s CEO said:
That CEO positively exudes old-time southern charm. Next up on the menu replacing black-eyed peas: Tuscan-style crudités, with an ad campaign featuring Dr. Oz.
A couple years ago on a road trip we got into Lebanon, Tennessee where we were going to stay overnight at about 6pm. After checking in, craving some BBQ we went to a place but it had 'Que only on Fridays and Saturdays, and this was a Thursday. We’d never heard of a part-time Bar-B-Que joint before so with tears in our eyes we said, “Fuck it,” and changed to the closest of two Cracker Barrels the navigator pointed to.
On arriving what looked to be the back side it was the fanciest CB we’d ever seen, surrounded by a wrought iron fence, a rather small parking lot, and it was dark. Turned out it was the headquarters for the chain. When we mentioned that to the server at the restaurant we eventually wound up at she said, “That happens a lot.”
I was not, but any excuse to eat black-eyed peas is a good one.
I didn’t know about it either, and I’ve never had black-eyed peas.
I am now, but I don’t think I’d ever heard of it until I was well into adulthood. It certainly wasn’t a thing in the upper Midwest when I grew up there. It appears to have, at least originally, been a Southern and Black tradition, and black-eyes peas were uncommon-to-nonexistent in the local Wisconsin diet when I was younger.
Yeah, I’m not sure about “everyone in America” but I’d hazard a guess that a heatmap of the density of Cracker Barrels and a map of people who know about it are going to overlap pretty handily