My esteem for Cracker Barrel is modest. I liked it a bit more when there were fewer good breakfast anytime options. It’s fairly easy to paste Cracker Barrel now in this department.
For decades, however, I have found Cracker Barrel valuable for the occasional road trip stop. It’s predictable, to the point that you walk in and can’t tell one location from another. (I did visit a mirror-image one somewhere recently—hostess (and men’s room) to the right, not the left—and it surprised me how unsettling I found it.) That predictability carries over the food, which is a consistent B- to B.
I thought the addition of alcohol to the menu might threaten the gestalt. I do find the references to it on the menu odd, but honestly, my experience hasn’t been jeopardized, despite the wails of some. It’s a decent burger if I want a burger. I like the pot roast with mashed potatoes and green beans, and it’s not as horrendous for you as you might think. The breakfast is a safe play, neither delighting nor disappointing. (I shouldn’t say this out loud, but I still find it a click above Waffle House.)
But Cracker Barrel has the same problem Cadillac had in the ’80s. Its customers are aging out. (To the grave.) That’s not a sustainable business model, so they need to do something. Clearly they don’t know what that is. I don’t either. However, enough people seem alarmed by the changes to the logo that it’s safe to say they’ve struck a nerve.
Maybe that’s a strong indicator that they should double down on what they do well, not homogenize further into the interstate exit landscape. Hey, Cracker Barrel? Sell the young people on what you already do. Instead it feels like you’ve started a game of bring me a rock, and that’s no way to design anything.