Welcome home, Uncle Herschel.
Responding to a weeklong barrage of complaints from its loyal customers, Cracker Barrel announced late Tuesday it was scrapping the restaurant’s rebranding campaign and returning to its classic logo.
‘We thank our guests for sharing their voices and love for Cracker Barrel,’ the company posted on X. ‘We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain.’
Critics immediately pounced on social media, suggesting the company was caving to right-wing pressure, including a call earlier in the day from former President Donald Trump, who encouraged the company to reverse course before it was too late.
‘Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate poll), and manage the company better than ever before,’ Trump urged early Tuesday. They got a billion dollars’ worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major news conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again.’
Trump then acknowledged the company’s mea culpa Tuesday night.
‘Congratulations Cracker Barrel on changing your logo back to what it was. All of your fans very much appreciate it,’ Trump wrote. ‘Good luck in the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!’
Company executives need to go beyond restoring the logo and acknowledge that Cracker Barrel was built on moral, commonsense values.
Attributing the company’s decision to Trump’s remarks about the logo misses the larger concern. Returning Uncle Herschel to his chair beside the barrel is a start, but if that’s where the company retreat ends, Cracker Barrel will continue to sell fewer biscuits, fried chicken and Mama’s pancakes in the years to come.
Sadly, today’s Cracker Barrel isn’t your aunt or uncle’s wholesome highway pit stop it once was.
In recent years, Cracker Barrel has sponsored Pride events, partnered with the Human Rights Campaign to fan and normalize pronoun nonsense and sexual confusion and warmly embraced corporate DEI efforts. In the process, its stock price has dropped from a high of $147.91 in 2021 to the mid-$50s today.
Corporate rebranding and cultural firestorms often flow from internal ideological ignorance and progressive arrogance to outside firms obsessed with forcing their distorted and often woke worldview on everyone else.
Reports now suggest Cracker Barrel dismissed or ignored earlier warnings from investors. Sardar Biglari, one such entrepreneur, called the entire rebranding exercise ‘obvious folly.’
How did Cracker Barrel manage to go off its rocker?
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before. From Coca-Cola’s ‘New Coke’ fiasco in the 1980s to Bud Light’s tone-deaf campaign celebrating Dylan Mulvaney, there’s precedent for corporations committing unforced errors. It took decades for Bud Light to cultivate its brand and just 32 hours to destroy it.
While the company says the man in the logo is a composite, ‘Uncle Herschel’ was a real man and a real uncle of Danny Evins, the company’s founder. Cracker Barrel even calls him the ‘soul of Cracker Barrel.’ He was a salesman who frequented general stores all over the South and was known to ‘sit a spell’ and visit with customers. At company headquarters in Lebanon, Tenn., there’s even a statue of him standing beside an empty bench as if to invite you to sit and converse.
I think Herschel, who died in 1998, would have some thoughts about what’s been going on.
When Coca-Cola was fielding complaints after rolling out its new formula in 1985, company president Don Keough decided to take some of the protest calls himself. One was from an elderly woman. She was crying.
‘I said, ‘Honey, what’s the matter?’’ he recalled. ‘She said, ‘You’re taking away Coca-Cola … You’re playing around with my youth.’’
The late David Ogilvy, nicknamed the ‘Father of Advertising,’ knew well the lure and idiocy of trying to fix something that isn’t broken. ‘It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to come up with something new every six months,’ he warned. ‘It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change.’
Cracker Barrel underestimated the emotional tug and power of its familiar logo. In a world of constant change, Herschel remained a constant. In an economy that seems to celebrate the hard-charging, the old man represents those who are comfortable and content — a reprieve from the chaos and noisy churn everywhere else.
Company executives need to go beyond restoring the logo and acknowledge that Cracker Barrel was built on moral, commonsense values. They should politely pivot from politically correct corporate silliness and simply embrace the wholesome, sensible and timeless standards that have driven the company’s success: truth, fairness, kindness, respect and good old-fashioned hospitality.
The lesson here is simple: If you don’t want your company to go broke, resist the urge to go woke.
Cracker Barrel says it’s listening — but time will tell who the company is listening to in the days to come.