Cracker Barrel Cracks

As Beege pointed out last week, the Cracker Barrel rebrand did not go well. They announced a bland new logo and their stock began to sink. But today, the company announced it would reverse course. It is dumping the new logo and returning to the old one.

We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain.

At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm… pic.twitter.com/C32QMLOeq0

— Cracker Barrel (@CrackerBarrel) August 26, 2025

At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family.  As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.

This is quite a reversal of a change that has been in the works for more than a year. Just last week the company’s CEO was saying confidently that people were fine with the new look.

Last week, CEO Julie Felss Masino made the rounds promoting the change, including an appearance on ‘‘Good Morning America’’ in which host Michael Strahan asked her, “What if all the customers are coming at you hard enough about the look of the restaurant, and they want to go back to the old way?”

She responded with, “Honestly, the feedback’s been overwhelmingly positive, that people like what we’re doing.”

Obviously they had second thoughts. Robby Starbuck, who campaigned against the change celebrated the announcement as a win.

Big news: Cracker Barrel has caved. They just sent an email confirming that they’re returning to the old logo. All plans for the new logo have been scrapped. Now they just need to end DEI and stop funding all ages pride shows!

The emailed statement:

“We thank your guests for… pic.twitter.com/13OJLzfGBX

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) August 26, 2025

As always, we get results and we have them on the run. They’ve also distanced themselves from the woke @HRC by saying they don’t associate with them now. 

We are winning and we plan to keep winning.

Fox Business published a story earlier today pointing out that the company received a warning that the rebranding would be a disaster a year ago.

Cracker Barrel’s slide into a rebranding debacle began with a phone call at 4:30 p.m. on May 16, 2024.

That day, Cracker Barrel’s new CEO, Julie Felss Masino, got on the phone with investors and unveiled the details of a “strategic transformation plan” her board of directors had approved. The first of “five pillars” in the plan would be “refining” and “evolving the brand across all touchpoints.” 

Over the next months, Masino and her board of directors dismissed at least four warnings by a top investor, Sardar Biglari, that the rebranding was “obvious folly,” filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal.

“Cracker Barrel is not a broken brand but it has a broken board,” he wrote, in a scathing seven-page letter to shareholders.

It’s not clear what the final straw was for the change of heart today but it’s worth mentioning that earlier today President Trump tweeted this from Truth Social.

🚨 NEW STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP ON CRACKER BARREL pic.twitter.com/49YDI1xlZM

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 26, 2025

Did Cracker Barrel get the message? It seems they did. Deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich said Cracker Barrel called to thank Trump for his opinion.

I appreciated the call earlier this evening with @CrackerBarrel. They thanked President Trump for weighing in on the issue of their iconic “original” logo. They wanted the President to know that they heard him, along with customer response (the ultimate poll), and would be… https://t.co/z8smaUVYKE

— Taylor Budowich (@TayFromCA) August 26, 2025

Just a moment ago Trump tweeted his response:

So is this a happy ending to this story? I think it is for a lot of customers but not for the media who always sense that anything conservatives are happy about is bad.

After online outrage by conservatives who accused the country-themed restaurant chain of changing its values or going “woke” when it rolled out a new logo, the company said Tuesday that it was returning to its old branding…

Other companies have been met with right-wing outrage for advertising or other business decisions, including when Bud Light had a branded content partnership with transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney.

How often does NBC News report on left-wing outrage? Not very often. I found two examples, the most recent of which was 2020. How does a news outlet go through the summer of 2020 and not write about left-wing outrage more than once? But right-wing outrage returns three pages of stories using that phrase according to Google. It’s almost like they’ve taken sides.