Cracker Barrel’s long history of cozying up to left-leaning organizations exposed: Report

Cracker Barrel is facing outrage over the decision to redesign the company’s iconic logo and the appearance of the chain’s restaurants. It has also surfaced that the beloved national restaurant chain has been aligning with woke organizations for years, according to reports.

As Blaze News reported in June 2023, Cracker Barrel faced boycotts over celebrating Pride Month. Cracker Barrel received backlash for proudly announcing that the restaurant chain with southern comfort food was vowing to push DEI initiatives with an LGBTQ+ alliance.

‘Cracker Barrel didn’t just lose its logo. It lost its soul.’

The Cracker Barrel Old Country Store previously shared a social media post featuring a photo of a rainbow-colored version of the chain’s iconic rocking chair sitting on the porch. The photo had the caption: “We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with our employees and guests. Everyone is always welcome at our table (and our rainbow rocker). Happy Pride!”

The Tennessee-based restaurant touts the company’s “Business Resource Groups,” which “allow employees to come together with common interests, perspectives, and experiences around topics such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and other special interests, space to be a community.”

Cracker Barrel highlights several special interest groups within the organization, including:

• LGBTQ+ Alliance: “Supporting Home Office and Field employees to bring their whole selves to work while strengthening Cracker Barrel’s relationship to the LGBTQ+ community.”
• Be Bold: “The mission of Be Bold is to cultivate and develop Black Leaders within the Cracker Barrel organization utilizing allyship, mentorship, and education to create a path to continued excellence as well as a vibrant and diverse community.”
• HOLA: “HOLA’s mission is to promote Hispanic and Latino culture through hiring, developing, and retaining talent within Cracker Barrel. To create a culture of inclusivity and awareness through community outreach.”
• Women’s Connect: “Our mission & goal is to inspire the women of Cracker Barrel by empowering, educating and engaging to achieve the strategic initiatives of Cracker Barrel.”

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Anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck revealed Cracker Barrel’s ties with left-leaning organizations.

Starbuck claimed that Cracker Barrel had sponsored Human Rights Campaign events for 10 years.

Starbuck wrote on the X social media platform, “They even brought an HRC representative to their Tennessee HQ to do a pronoun and transgenderism training.”

The Human Rights Campaign is described as being the “nation’s largest LGBT-interest activist organization” and having a “leading role in Democratic Party politics and left-leaning activism” by InfluenceWatch — an organization that provides “accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues.”

“Cracker Barrel worked with a group called Conexión Américas as part of their DEI efforts,” Starbuck asserted. “This group helps illegal immigrants, providing them with lawyers, and the executive director opposes President Trump’s deportations.”

Starbuck continued, “Cracker Barrel sponsored the Out & Equal LGBTQ Workplace Advocate Conference and presented a workshop on how Cracker Barrel has made progress supporting LGBTQ+ causes.”

Starbuck noted that Cracker Barrel won the 2018 award for top LGBT employee resource group from Out & Equal.

Starbuck accused the Southern-style restaurant chain of creating a “special ‘diverse’ suppliers program focused on increasing ‘diversity’ among suppliers.”

Starbuck highlighted that Cracker Barrel partnered with Nashville Pride and River City Pride.

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Blaze News previously reported that the company hired three marketing agencies to “help with its redesign as part of a $700 million larger transformation plan.”

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck stated, “Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino said on Good Morning America this week that people are thrilled about the [restaurant’s] rebrand. I think she’s lying.”

“Woke ideology has changed our country in countless ways, some of which we may never get back. But Cracker Barrel has always represented the one thing I think so many Americans currently crave: NOSTALGIA,” Beck added. “You go to Cracker Barrel for the rocking chairs outside, the meals that taste like grandma’s home cooking, and the simple game of Chinese checkers on the table.”

“‘Rebrand’ all of that to something more modern, something more inclusive, and something that erases those feelings, and you’re ‘rebranding’ the SOLE reason why anyone goes there to begin with,” Beck concluded.

Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth said, “Cracker Barrel’s stock is down double digits over investors[‘] concerns that its new rebrand, including changing its logo and remodeling its dining rooms, will alienate loyal customers. This is just the latest example in a long list of companies who don’t understand their core, loyal customers.”

A post on X with more than 28,000 likes stated, “Cracker Barrel didn’t just lose its logo. It lost its soul.”

A spokesperson for Cracker Barrel told Fox News, “Our values haven’t changed, and the heart and soul of Cracker Barrel haven’t changed.”

“And Uncle Herschel remains front and center in our restaurants and on our menu,” the spokesperson said of the face of the restaurant chain. “He is the face of ‘the Herschel Way,’ the foundation of how our 70,000-plus employees provide the country hospitality for which we are known.”

“Cracker Barrel has been a destination for comfort and community for more than half a century, and this fifth evolution of the brand’s logo, which works across digital platforms as well as billboards and roadside signs, is a call-back to the original and rooted even more in the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all back in 1969,” Cracker Barrel said.

Cracker Barrel said it “has not participated in the Human Rights Campaign Index or had any affiliation with HRC in several years.”

Cracker Barrel did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Blaze News.

Recent boycotts relating to the current culture wars have been directed at Bud Light, Target, and Chick-fil-A.

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