If the new logo looked too good, people would accuse them of using AI.
There’s one along the interstate 3-5 miles from here. We used to take Late Aged MIL there when she was still around. I’ve not been back since her last visit, so 5-ish years ago.
I’ll give breakfast there a try today & report back on whatever flail I find.
Yesterday I asked AI to design a new logo. it gave me this. The font is very generic but I like the little barrel.
Much as I hate AI art, I prefer that logo to the actual new one.
It’s probably a similar joke that initiated the change in the first place. I’m sure during the Uncle Ben’s and Aunt Jamima dust-up, someone was using the “cracker” in the CB logo as an example where white people were similarly stereotyped.
I feel like this is a solution in search of a problem. I checked their sales as a whole and it’s been increasing steadily, perhaps not as fast as some other chains, but it’s not as if they’re in decline and need a shot in the arm.
The old logo was old fashioned, but it’s an old fashioned style of restaurant. It’s their niche. I’m not one to demand slavish devotion to a failing business model, but it seems silly to make this big a change when your customer base is certainly change resistant.
well, they didn’t “bother” because they were very unlikely to win such a lawsuit. Brands with the same name can exist in different lines of trades and a court is very unlikely to find infringement in such instances. Just because you have a trade mark registered in one class doesn’t mean someone else can’t use the same or similar trademark in a completely different class. Consider Delta faucets and Delta airlines for example.
Regarding the issue of racial homogeneity vs diversity in branding and advertising: recall this thread from 2022: “Has anyone else noticed that almost every single couple/family in commercials now is interracial?
Yes, although interracially blended families are more common in ads than IRL, the consensus agrees that that representation is a good thing. Relationship barriers between humans is demonstrably wrong, and normalizing their absence is an improvement. Tweaking the actual demographics is immaterial
And yet, I’m skeptical due to the source. I don’t think businesses are really concerned with improving society. I’m more convinced they’re obsessed to the exclusion of all else in squeezing every last dollar out of every possible customer. And if we applaud their methods we support their motives equally without qualifications. And I use “their” deliberately, because at this point it is us vs them.
For example, this Turo ad “skip the rental counter,” manages to get under my skin in just 15 seconds. A gray, windowless lined with “tourists” (that may bring up contemporary images of refugees from the news). But here blithely blows by a full-color, self-satisfied young couple, led forward by the matriarch; apparently of the affluent professional class. People obviously plugged into the money-making and tech-savvy sector, and not at all responsible to the poor suckers standing in line. Escaping the society they’ve created for a tropical getaway. But hey: they’re ethnically blended, so really this is the face of progress.
On Squawk Box this morning, I saw an interview with a professor of marketing, who said that all changes such as this need to be put before a focus group for reaction and feedback, before making them permanent. He called it a ‘tiny test’ with the most loyal customers. He thought that it was apparent that CB did not do this and it was a glaring error on their part.
He also said that they should now tell their RW customers that the old guy in the original logo was Joe Biden, and they were replacing him.
Pretty good interview. You can find it here.
I find that hard to believe. Now, perhaps they didn’t do it right and got feedback that didn’t prepare them for the public’s reaction. But I can’t imagine they didn’t test it out on a focus group of two. I’m not in that business, and even I know that you have to do that.
Cracker Barrel’s problem is the food.
I stopped going there a few months ago.
I had ordered the Pot Roast dinner..
What I got was a bowl filled with a gravy-ish fluid, some floating vegetables, and lumps of beef.
That is not a Pot Roast, that is Beef Stew.
And then I got the runs.
Never again.
I found this a good analysis of Cracker Barrel’s missteps, and it has nothing to do with “woke”.
https://www.thestreet.com/retail/cracker-barrel-ceo-breaks-silence-as-company-upsets-more-customers
Signature quote: “The oldies will hate it, and the young still won’t go.”
At the last radio station where I worked (in news), they decided to dump their longstanding country music format in favor of a “crossover” format featuring newer country “artists” plus a selection of distinctly non-country pop tunes, figuring that would appeal to a younger demographic. Listeners hated it, ratings cratered and last I heard, the station and its iconic call sign dating back to the 1920s had gone bust.*
*not that I’ve ever been a fan of country music, but the old format at least featured songs that the countrified liked.
Yeah, trying to appeal to young people with a radio station is truly a lost cause. They don’t listen to radio at all.
This is a big part of it. The food is cheap but the quality has gotten terrible. The last time I went (several years ago) I ordered the meatloaf. It was large chunks of crunchy bell peppers and onions loosely held together by a tiny amount of ground beef. I’ve been tempted to get their chicken and dumplings (they’re about the only ones around here that serve it) but after that “meatloaf” I’m rather afraid of what they’ve done to chicken and dumplings…
Pre-smart phones, we would often stop at Cracker Barrels on road trips because they were often in rural areas where other options were nonexistent or not easily seen from the highway. The food was decent and the store was fun to browse. They also had a great deal where you could trade in audio books (on CDs or tape) and get a decent discount on buying another one. Also super handy on long road trips.
But now with smart phones… it’s trivial to find restaurants even in a small town and reviews let you know if it’s worth the stop or if you should just go 10 more miles down the road. And audio books? You can store as many as you want on your phone, no need to stop and buy a replacement if you finish the current one or don’t like it.
I think this is a problem for many mature businesses. They have their core customers who are aging out and if they wish to survive long term must attract a different demographic. How do you attract that new demographic without alienating the core customers you need for your immediate survival? Anecdotally, Cracker Barrel seems to be doing okay in my area. I live close to one off I-30 and it gets a lot of local traffic as well as people just passing through.
We don’t have many Cracker Barrel restaurants here in Minnesota (one!), so when we were in Waco last year for the solar eclipse, that was one of our must-go places. When our food arrived, we looked at each other’s plates, and realized that the food, although all different, all looked brown. At least the waitress was well-seasoned and was fun.
Here’s a great article on IBM’s logo redesign over the years. They hired noted designer Paul Rand (for lots of stuff!), not some design committee.
https://designbro.com/blog/industry-thoughts/ibm-logo-evolution/
As promised upthread, I just visited my local one for the first time in ~5 years. Not really my preferred sort of experience these days.
Arrived 1145 on Friday to a nearly full parking lot. Short line to get a table; not that they were out of open tables, just only had one seater working and the crowd was pouring in for lunch.
Once seated I looked around. About 40% tables occupied, and a mix of 30-somethings through 70-somethings. Everybody had a working class or working class retiree air about them. Not the Pretty People®. Although the younger folks were present, the oldies were sure the majority. OTOH, this was lunchtime on a Friday and much of the younger demographic would have been at work. By the time I left at about 12:30 the place was 80% full.
My breakfast of steak, eggs, biscuits, & grits was good. And plentiful. It was a 10 oz sirloin cut of a cheap grade, but they got the medium rare right and it wasn’t fatty nor gristly. Biscuits were hot and fresh and grits were neither too wet nor overcooked; just right. Surprisingly good condition for this late in the breakfast hours. $21. Which is certainly cheaper than many places near here for comparable items.
They also offer small meals prepacked cold to go. $6 for a meat and a carb. Perfect for seniors. As an experiment I ordered the fried chix w mac & cheese. I ended up with one rather large thigh & a big dollop of M&C. Looks plenty good; it’ll be tomorrow before I eat it.
When I left through the store section it was full of browsers and about 6 people in line to pay for their souvenirs or oddball candy.
If that location is typical, the company is in a lot less short-term trouble than I had thought. As noted by many people above, it’s the long term that’s worrisome for any business catering (heh 
) mostly to older folks.
Maybe Cracker Barrel got confused and had Rand Paul do their redesign.
Looking at the stock price & volume just now, it’s obvious that yesterday there was panic selling by somebody at the opening. The volume to be sold simply exceeded the instantaneous supply of buyers and the shares duly tanked. By end of day, half the “crash” had already been reversed.
Which upward momentum carried a little bit into Friday and now at 1:30pm ET the shares have now leveled off.
Aside from this hiccup, the shares have had a good run since April. It would not have hurt my feelings at all to have taken a big position in them just about any date in Apr or May.
Question: Has anybody stopped frequenting a business just because they changed their logo?
- Yes
- No
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