I liked the old logo, because it was recognizable. Sure, it’s busy, and you can’t tell it is a cracker sitting next to a barrel when you are on the highway, but you know the shape. That’s all you need.
Now the logo looks like a color reversal of Golden Corral. And it is now closer to Old Country Buffet. They may have interchangeable food and clientele, but the restaurant logos should make it clear which you are getting.
The drop in food quality made me ask the inevitable question “private equity acquisition strikes again?”
Answer:
Who is the largest shareholder of Cracker Barrel?
(“Biglari Holdings”), Biglari Capital Corp. (“Biglari Capital”), The Lion Fund, L.P. (the “Lion Fund”), and Sardar Biglari (collectively, “Biglari,” “our” or “we”), the largest shareholder of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., a Tennessee corporation (“Cracker Barrel” or the “Company”).
Not a complete PE takeover, since obviously they’re still publicly traded. But the majority shareholders are PE firms.
Holy Hell, no wonder Steak and Shake has been bleating about this!
Bilgari is the CEO of SaS.
And …..
Fairly diversified – and occasionally impressive – holdings.
I’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel. There are none near me. I’d have to drive to Ventura or Fontana neither of which are even in the same county as me. I’ve seen them when traveling, but they never made me want to stop. In my mind, they conjured up dusty, sticky interiors with mediocre bland food. Interesting to hear they have good breakfasts. I’d stop for that if I was on the road.
I can attest to that fact. As one of your side options, order the hash brown casserole.
The last time I ate at my local CB, I ordered the 4-piece chicken dinner. It was good.
I’d say breakfast there is a notch up from Denny’s or IHOP. Not fancy; still 'Murrican food for big people used to big portions of carb-heavy food. I worked hard to pick a relatively carb-light meal.
One of their signature dishes is a ~10" cast iron skillet filled with 6 cinnamon rolls covered in white cream cheese+sugar icing. That’s meant as breakfast for one person. They claim it’s a sharable side but you know that’s not where most of them go.
Great Googly Moogly!
I like the simplicity of the new logo, but it doesn’t have any character. The attempt at a barrel shape with the background yellow feels too lazy and minimalistic (and my aesthetic bends towards minimalism.) More can be done with barrel idea.
That said, the overly busy original logo is a good representation of what Cracker Barrel is—old timey, country, steeped in tradition, Americana, that sort of shit. It’s out of place in this modern world, but isn’t that somewhat its charm? Keep the old logo.
My experience with Cracker Barrel is 20 years old, and I haven’t been to one since.
The girl I was dating at the time and I took a road trip from Denver to Boston, only eating at Cracker Barrels, because it was her favorite restaurant. See, if I a picked local place that looked interesting, and it was bad, then it was my fault. If she picked Cracker Barrel, and it was bad, then it was an off night, or a bad location, but not my fault.
My conclusion from eating at so many Cracker Barrels in a short period of time was that there was a huge inconsistency in food and service quality. Even back home, she refused to go to the nearer one, because of a previous bad experience, so occasionally we’d go to the one 45 minutes away.
Of course the whole point of only eating at Cracker Barrels on a road trip was we always knew what we’d get. The menu was the same, but I got to dreading it, because so often the food was terrible, even though the same dish, a few days and 800 miles ago was good.
I’ve never eaten at a Cracker Barrel, so I won’t comment about its food. However, its new logo looks bland and uninteresting. From the perspective of someone passing on the road, it’s almost indistinguishable from Denny’s.
Their general breakfast items are pretty good.
I once ordered “steak tips” as a side, because I like steak, it was pretty cheap, and I was hungry enough that the bacon and eggs and toast or whatever wasn’t going to fill me up. Note that it was a extra; I think it was $5 or $6 more for a pretty good quantity of steak. It looked like a really good deal.
I got a pile of gristly, grey, extremely salty skinny bits of meat that were harder to chew than jerky. You pretty much had to chew them until they got too rubbery then spit out what was left. Like super-salty beef gum. It was like someone decided to take the inedible bits they cut off the regular steak and tried to rebrand them as a side item at a discount. So don’t order that.
That was the only time I ever got something I didn’t like from any visit I’ve made to a Cracker Barrel, and the rest of my breakfast was enjoyable.
This is a really good way to put it. It’s like you ordered something at Denny’s and the cook was extra ambitious and made it better than usual. But it’s not going to be any big revelation or anything.
Perfect!
I almost went back in and added a sentence after my “…IHOP” namely “Unlike those two, CB food doesn’t taste like desperation.”
But I ran out of edit window before I had my inspiration. Sigh.
This reminds me of how shocked and betrayed I felt when Nestle’s Quik became “Nesquik”, but I got over it.
How would you know?
Say you’re driving around, looking for a place to eat. You see a Cracker Barrel logo on the side of a restaurant and think, “Nah, I don’t feel like eating there.” Did you just not feel like eating there, or was it the logo? Are you 100% sure you know why you make your decisions? I don’t.
I think the question was whether we have essentially decided to boycott a product because of a logo change. Most rational people wouldn’t. MAGAs might.
I voted no in the poll, but I’d like to add additional info.
I always used to think Arby’s looked like a place I would not eat when it had the big brown hat. It looked…brown. The sign literally took my appetite away.
After they changed to what they are now, I tried them, and I like them. Did I try them because of the change? Probably not, but was it a factor? I don’t honestly know.
Kentucky Fried Chicken’s change to KFC (“we still fry it we just don’t draw attention to it!”) didn’t faze me a bit. I still like it just the same.
I wasn’t happy losing the Big Boy, but I still enjoyed them, whether they be Marc’s, Bob’s or JB’s. But at least out here in the west, they are all gone.
I used to think Jack In The Box looked stupid. Their change was for the better, and I no longer do, but since I’m not a stoner, I still don’t eat there.
Didn’t Outback change their logo? I don’t even notice. Anyway, it’s not the signage that tuns me off, it’s the stupid commercials. I still like the restaurant.
Steak N Shake could change their logo to an AI generated picture of a three armed human and I’d still like them. But the other changes (kiosk only ordering,pick up your own food, etc, and they still want a tip) make me angry.
Tomorrow we will be heading out for our traditional yearly vacation (wife and mother-inlaw). In the middle is a Cracker Barrel that we will eat at, going there and coming back. I guess it would be in MAGA territory (the merchandise at a nearby gas station would be a good indicator that it is). We will see how it goes.
I wonder if anyone has ever decided to try a barbecue restaurant after it changed its signage, based on the unwritten rule that “the more human-like the pig on the sign acts, the better the food.”
I’m a bit proud of myself that, even after decades of working in advertising (and redesigning many corporate logos), NONE of my buying decisions are based on it.
I HATE Toyota ads, but have bought numerous Toyotas based on longevity charts.
Tito’s and Buffalo Trace bottles look pathetically undesigned*, but what’s inside is good quality.
And I’ve eaten at many a Cracker Barrel because it’s one of the few places in the north to get grits …as a side, or with their “Uncle Herschel’s Favorite® Breakfast:
Two eggs with grits -plus- your choice of Fried Apples or Hashbrown Casserole; and your choice of Sugar Cured Ham, Fried Chicken Tenderloins, U.S. Catfish Fillet Grilled or Hickory-Smoked Grilled Pork Chop. Comes with All the Fixin’s (Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits with Sawmill Gravy, and jam or Apple Butter. All for $8.39…
.
*Ooh, almost forgot Planteray (née Plantation) Rum. The seam where the label on the bottle splits is in between the L and the A, so when it (inevitably) doesn’t line up, the first two letters are higher than the rest of the brand name.
