There was nothing wrong with the old logo. It wasn’t offensive. But management felt, probably correctly, that growth for the company depended on reinventing, or at least updating, the restaurants to appeal to a younger customer base. That’s probably not wrong. But now they are stuck with their old image. Short term I imagine that this will be ok, and they might even enjoy a bump in sales due to the publicity. Long term, they face the same problem as before, but won’t be able to adapt to changing market conditions because Cleatus won’t allow it. And Cleatus can’t support sales forever. Best bet for management might be to create an entirely new brand of restaurant in order to grow the company. Once the new brand is established, then they can quietly shutter the cracker barrel brand, or at least not depend on growing it to maintain profitablity.
OK, the impression I had was that the new CEO thought it was racist to have an old white man in the logo and so that’s why he got removed. Guess I was wrong.
Anyhow, a very weird logo quarrel about weirdly nothing. I thought the new logo looked nice and simple and clean.
I mean, they seem kind of fucked here, their top line has grown reasonably but they’ve invested (based on news reports) in a massive spending campaign to ‘modernize’ and rebrand. But that seems to be less about dwindling traffic, and more about giant amounts of spending/investment.
| Fiscal Year | Revenue (USD) | Net Profit (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 3.47B | 41M |
| 2023 | 3.44B | 99M |
| 2022 | 3.27B | 132M |
| 2021 | 2.82B | 255M |
| 2020 | 2.52B | −32M |
| 2019 | 3.07B | 223M |
| 2018 | 3.03B | 248M |
| 2017 | 2.93B | 202M |
| 2016 | 2.91B | 189M |
| 2015 | 2.84B | 164M |
CEO Felss Masino defended the renovations as part of a natural evolution for a brand rooted in Americana.
“It’s because people have an emotional connection with the brand,” she said. “People’s immediate reaction to things is like, ‘Oh this isn’t the way it was,’” but they tend to come around.
Hahaha that’s just some wishful thinking.
Cracker Barrel’s modern makeover leaves diners divided | LiveNOW from FOX
Apparently such an entirely logical plan was beyond the capacity of corporate nimrods to envision.
Where did you hear that? Sounds like wishful thinking on your part.
And its back.
Updating the existing brand was also logical, and much cheaper than launching a new restaurant (especially in light of the numbers Maserschmidt posted). Being caught in a culture war was just bad luck.
Semi-predictable bad luck. Top management comes across as clueless about their actual clientele.
The truth about the actual clientele is that they are becoming less profitable. I predict that there will be a short term bump in the near future, but the long term trend will continue.
I don’t care about the logo myself. It may make it less visible when I’m on the road, but I don’t go to Cracker Barrel when I’m a road trip by myself these days.
But I will be going on a road trip with other people in a few weeks, and they like Cracker Barrel. So in theory they could search for the nearest one while I drove, if they wanted to go. But I don’t want to go into their interior because it will make me sad that it lost its uniqueness. I wouldn’t want every restaurant’s interior to be like that, but there is room for one. There’s room for a completely bland and functional interior, also, since that’s an aesthetic, but there is only room for a limited number of those in my aesthetic palate as well before it becomes too bland.
Yup. Corporations and brands have a lifespan too. Many exceed a single human lifespan but not by too much.
Hitching your corporate wagon to a specific generational aesthetic pretty well ensures you won’t outlive the people you hitch to.
OTOH, some cultures are multi-generational. To the degree CB represents general semi-rural working class culture they can last as long as that culture does. At least in areas where members of that culture is available in sufficient numbers.
Which is a large geographic fraction of the USA, albeit not a huge fraction of the total USA population.
I agree, and without doing a deep dive in the company financials, Maserschmidt seems to be correct that the decrease in the bottom line is likely due to a substantial increase in capital expenditures to modernize operations. As a stockholder (in general, I have no stake in Cracker Barrel) I welcome it when a company invests in capital expenditures to grow the business. In hindsight it seems that such expenditures may have been poorly executed, but I find it hard to fault the CEO and/or the Board of Directors for making the investment in the company. Revenues for the existing customer base are still healthy, and now they will have to rethink how they can grow the company beyond the existing customer base which I assume is still a goal.
I don’t know when the next earnings announcement is, but it would be interesting to call in and listen to it. I do that with a company that I am invested in, and I always find it interesting to get the insight from the company when they announce earnings and forward looking statements on operations.
Any guesses about what percentage of the people weighing in on this “controversy” are Cracker Barrel’s actual clientele? Certainly not Trump or the professionally outraged at Fox News.
No clue. For sure the newsworthy outrage and stock sell-off is manufactured.
But will Jethro and Billy-Sue Coveralls quit going there when their neighbors tell them about the horrible woke changes and those changes actually arrive at their local CB? Good question.
More commentary from social media:
There was an excellent article I read a couple of years ago (maybe even here) that I haven’t been able to find again. Basically the cycle that a resturant chain becomes associated with being a place where the old people eat so they try to rebrand to attract younger customers, but the rebrand fails to attract the younger customers while at the same time alienates the elderly customers and the chain closes down.
Cracker Barrel seems to be particularly screwed. It is branded to attract people nostalgic for what their grandparent’s houses looked like in the first half of the 20th century, but the people nostalgic for that time period are dropping like flies. Young adults today are nostalgic for 1980, not for 1940. Now Cracker Barrel is dependent on not nostalgia for old country kitchens but nostalgia for old Cracker Barrel restaurants. (I’ve never ate at a Cracker Barrel but I remember back when Long John Silvers used to cover their walls with old nautical crap )
I wonder whether food quality matters more than brand. As a case study, I might point to Howard Johnson’s (which failed) and Friendly’s (which is declining, having survived 2 Chapter 11 bankruptcies this century). Real question.
It should be possible to design a menu that appeals to a range of ages. Ambiance is trickier.
They might try treating vegetables as an ingredient rather than an afterthought.
As long as the vegetables aren’t pretending to be meat.
“It looks like it was remodeled by Dolores Uxbridge” (the Harry Potter villainess) is one comment I’ve heard.
“Make everything bland” is a trend that’s been going on for decades that I really, really hate.