You may not want to hear this, but the new Cracker Barrel logo was designed for the same reasons as the old one.
The old man wasn’t the highway exit restaurant’s version of Wendy or Colonel Sanders. He’s not really even all that old.
Nope, that folksy character is just 48 years old — two years shy of AARP eligibility! — and he was born out of a need to sell more dumplings, home goods and candy sticks.
Why Are People Mad at Cracker Barrel?
On Tuesday (Aug. 19), Cracker Barrel announced changes to the interior of the restaurant and store, as well as its logo.
While the remodel is dramatic, fans of the eatery zoomed in on the new logo with an anger typically reserved for controversial Supreme Court decisions.
Gone is the old fella seated alongside a barrel. Instead, Cracker Barrel is going with the company name only inside a dark yellow, boxy octagon.
A press release touted values and hospitality and brought country singer Jordan Davis in to be a spokesman.
“Our story hasn’t changed. Our values haven’t changed,” says Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Moore.
The internet responded with a collective, “YOU DID WHAT?!?!”
The Truth About the Old Cracker Barrel Logo
We’ll let others aggregate the angry social media posts. A separate conversation is certainly worth having about the effectiveness of the new logo.
If bland is the new pink, they win, but some could argue it’s a bit highway sign-ish.
Old Cracker Barrel Logo
The old logo wasn’t a nod to the chain’s’ founders, or really anyone.
Cracker Barrel opened in 1969 and just put its name and Old Country Store on the awning (for some reason Cracker Barrel was in quotes). You can kind of see how they’ve not been crushing it with signs since their founding.
Eight years later, founder Dan Evins decided he could do better, so he hired graphic designer Bill Holley for the job. The new logo was created on the back of a napkin and sent to print, sophistication be damned! It’s a good thing nobody needed to sneeze.
“This year we even unveiled a brand-new logo,” the website reads. “Rather than just showing one person, we wanted to feature lots of people. The idea was to celebrate the diversity of all our guests with a logo that represented our continued passion for pleasing people of all races, colors, and genders.”
Sure.
People who are claiming the brand went woke could point to that, but this looks to have been written in 2019. If anything, they undid woke.
Is Cracker Barrel’s Stock Plummeting?
Internet critics quickly become amateur investors when controversy surrounds a brand. Claims that the company lost hundreds of millions of dollars in value have been — at best — premature.
Stock was trading for about $61 a share on Tuesday morning. It dipped and recovered to $58 by Wednesday night.
The low came on Thursday morning when the stock fell to $50.76, but in the 24 hours since, it’s bounced back to $55.46. That’s about 10 percent, but it’s trending up, so who knows what the day will bring?
PICTURES: Country Stars Who Went Bankrupt
There’s an old saying that it’s easy to make a million dollars in the music business, but it’s hard to hold on to one dollar. These country stars found that out the hard way when they ended up going bankrupt.
Gallery Credit: Sterling Whitaker
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