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Few things in American life have felt as trapped in the amber of history as Cracker Barrel restaurants, with their recipe of comfort food served up in cozy confines that evoke a bygone era. It’s little wonder Americans routinely wait for an hour to get a table after church, or welcome a road-trip diversion when they see the classic logo on a highway sign.
Now, the cracker-jack whiz-kid marketing team at the iconic eatery’s corprate headquarters has decided to forgo all of this, including possibly, based on public reaction to their changes, the long lines.
CRACKER BARREL UNVEILS NEW SIMPLIFIED LOGO: ‘OUR STORY HASN’T CHANGED’
This may not exactly be wokeness at work, as we have seen with so many brands such as Target and Bud Light, but it is something similarly lifeless and cold.
The first object of outrage for fans of Cracker Barrel was a change to the design of the logo that has long stood sky-high along our rural highways, nearly as common as mile markers. It depicts an old man, sitting next to a barrel, presumably discussing farm equipment or the lack of rain.
That was the deal for the weary traveler. Come on in, sit for a spell. There’s rocking chairs and we’ll pour gravy over everything for you.
The new antiseptic logo, though it keeps a similar font, is a cold C and B. It could be the corporate logo for almost any product you can imagine. It is indistinguishable from a logo that your cousin might make for his plumbing business using AI.
One thing we can say is that this cold, corporate signage represents truth in advertising when you see what the wunderkinds in the Cracker Barrel C suite have in mind for the interior of the once-charming restaurants.
Instead of feeling like an old-timey cottage, the new design has white walls, bright lights, modern decor and, all in all, looks more like a place for ladies who lunch than families or truck drivers.
This is why the shake-up at Cracker Barrel feels like wokeness. It feels like this very authentic place is being turned into a cookie-cutter version of every other chain restaurant. And what is wokeness ultimately, but a demand for uniformity?
There is no spark of life in wokeness. This is why the woke chant in unison, repeating each other like mindless drones, not individuals, but inseparable from the cause, the hive. Similarly, there is no life in this bright, white reimagining of Cracker Barrel.
The pace of change in American life is frantic on almost every front. There are fewer and fewer things we can enjoy exactly the way we did 30 or even 15 years ago. It seems every day we awake to a world that we recognize less.
It is possible that the Cracker Barrel brand has been struggling. In my travels I’ve frequented a few, and after breakfast, I can’t say they tend to be packed. But a rebrand doesn’t have to erase the core of what customers love about a place.
The music of Cracker Barrel has always been a dim but forceful hum, punctuated by a baby’s cry, or a bout of laughter from some darkened corner; it is as predictable and soothing as a Norman Rockwell painting, a solid, unchanging experience.
I have no doubt that these changes to Cracker Barrel were focus-grouped and product tested, they were surveyed and maybe even AI assisted. But just as is true for so many pollsters and politicians, they see the signal, but they don’t hear the music.
The music of Cracker Barrel has always been a dim but forceful hum, punctuated by a baby’s cry, or a bout of laughter from some darkened corner; it is as predictable and soothing as a Norman Rockwell painting, a solid, unchanging experience.
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But not anymore.
Cracker Barrel may not have gone woke in the same way as Bud Light did with trans spokesmodel Dylan Mulvaney, or Target with its trans outfits for toddlers, but their new branding has the aesthetics of wokeness.
This is an aesthetic that erases traditional Americana, that seeks to dethrone it, especially if it’s rooted in white experience, and to turn it into corporate slop that says nothing of our history and culture.
Hopefully, it is not too late for the leaders at Cracker Barrel to hit the brakes on this wildly unpopular choice, and there’s still a chance to remain what people want and cherish.
Because another thing wokeness tends to do is to cut us off from our past, tell us it was never any good anyway.
If this is not something that Cracker Barrels execs can do, there could be one last hope for updating an iconic America logo: Replace the old man next to the barrel with Sydney Sweeney. It just might work.
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