Maybe because I've only eaten in a Cracker Barrel once since 1993 have I really paid attention to them in any fashion other than, "DAMN! That parking lot is always packed!"

Our 1993 visit was a really good dinner for Ebola* and me on a cross-country leg, moving from SoCal to North Carolina. It had been a particularly stressful day of driving from New Orleans to north of Nashville, where I threw in the towel and stopped for the day. The two of us, plus the cat, the dog, and the biblical thunderstorms that had plagued us almost from launch time that morning. We were all feeling beaten to pieces, and the Red Roof Inn's resident beagle launching at my door, wanting to fight our Scottie even before I could get out of the car, capped it off perfectly.

I had been in the first circle of Hell all day.

So, the Cracker Barrel in the adjoining parking lot looked like the fastest choice for dinner. Even better, we didn't have to get back in the car, and so we hiked on over.

Dang if it didn't turn out to be awfully pleasant and really good. I had an herbal roast chicken that I can see and smell to this day decades later, and the ten-year-old vulture with me inhaled every bite of his. And it was a buttload of food.

I now understood the appeal of the place and have remembered that evening fondly ever since.

Every Cracker Barrel parking lot we've passed in all these years invariably has seemed packed, no matter the time of day. But inside the building, I guess it hasn't all been biscuits and gravy.

They've gotten themselves slapped with a big fat "woke" label.

Cracker Barrel's had a hotline for harassment complaints since 2004 and a "Diversity Council" since 2016...

Driving Inclusion from the Inside Out

Beginning in 2016, an internal Diversity Council was developed that included diverse leaders throughout the organization. We continue to listen to and leverage the Diversity Council as we progress on our journey of understanding.

...so you can't say that the company's shift to a DEI environment is a sudden lurch. The corporate DEI page linked above is chockful of LGBwhatever outreach, most dating to at least 2018, not to mention the usual diversity and inclusiveness claptrap. It's throughout the business resource groupings, for instance. There are seven separate groups under this umbrella.

Our Business Resource Groups 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. These employee-led organizations provide opportunities to network, obtain and develop leadership skills, and be a resource and influence on all aspects of the Cracker Barrel brand.

Whatever. You can be as woke as you want internally and pat yourself on the back as long as you're making money, right? And Cracker Barrel does pat itself liberally on the back. It's the money part they're having trouble with.

What was sudden was the "in our customer's face" aspect - a corporate coming out of the closet that went spectacularly off the rails. Whereas Cracker Barrel higher-ups had kept all the touchy-feely diversity gibberish and outreach in-house while leaving the fried chicken tenders alone and the front porch unmolested by sex or politics, last year, they burst into the fray in a jarring, jolting rainbow of color from the second you approached the building.

They turned an iconic Cracker Barrel front porch chair into a Rainbow Rocker for Pride Month. Worse, they made sure you knew it was there.

For the uproar that followed, they might as well have spray-painted the whole place.

Naturally, people who would prefer to have no helpings of celebrating sexual preference served alongside their bacon and eggs - pleasant, neutral eating environments being much more conducive to happy masticating - were aghast and said so. They also voted with their wallets. 

On the opposing side, the LGBwhatever crowd said they would happily now visit queer-friendly Cracker Barrel in support of the company's rainbow flag waving.

I SIMPLY MUST INGEST A QUEER-FRIENDLY BISCUIT IN SUPPORT

...Calls for a boycott are being drowned out by people praising the company’s move toward inclusivity, many who’ve chosen not to darkened the doorstep of a Cracker Barrel for years due to its previous intolerance toward the LGBTQ+ community.

“I’ve avoided Cracker Barrel for as long as I can remember, not knowing if my family was truly welcome,” one person commented. “We’ll be sure to stop by our local location soon!”

Another commenter wrote, “This is so heartwarming to see and makes me want to go get breakfast at the closest one tomorrow! Don’t let hate win. We need more of this.”

You know what they say about "good intentions." Cracker Barrel waded boldly into waving. Many of their remaining post-COVID customers left in protest, while the group for whose Pride Month they'd been building gaily colored chairs for years, and just flamed the company's loyal base for? 

Well, the gays never did come through the door to buy that biscuit, as my friend Buck Throckmorton from Ace's pointed out last year.

...When I want a catfish dinner and some old time candy, I could not possibly care less about the sexual behaviors of the restaurant’s staff or patrons. I’d be grossed out if Cracker Barrel was devoting a month to celebrating heterosexual sex.

...Whatever the case, Cracker Barrel stock is now in free fall.

At the beginning of June Pride Month, Cracker Barrel stock (CBRL) was trading at $102 per share. It is now down to $91 per share, losing $4 per share on Friday alone.

You can suck up to the Rainbow Lobby all you want, but you'd better not count on them saving you for doing so. Fickle, aren't they?

What did Cracker Barrel do in the meantime to try to fix this mess? Schmaybe go back to its roots, get its country act together... and no.

They did what every truly woke corporation these days does. They hired someone who looks like this:

pic.twitter.com/zCpUVJNZ7a

— Rothmus 🏴 (@Rothmus) May 28, 2024

Who then wonkishly says something like this:

Cracker Barrel’s stock in freefall after CEO admits chain ‘just not as relevant as we once were’

...“We’re just not as relevant as we once were,” chief executive Julie Felss Masino, who took the helm of the company nine months ago, said on an investor call. “Some of our recipes and processes haven’t evolved in decades.”

WE HAVEN'T "EVOLVED"

Which then does this to your stock. It's now less than half of the value of what it was even after the Pride Month brouhaha and last spring's drop:

...As a genuine Cracker Barrel lover, as @FDRLST staff can attest, I can tell you its problems are two-fold: 1) management is completely detached from (and often hostile to) its customers and their values, and 2) there has been a massive decline in the quality of service. 

Until management understands that Cracker Barrel isn’t merely a “brand” to be managed — that it is an institution that families used to rely on to be a warm, safe, friendly place to get the closest thing to a home-cooked meal away from home — the company and its stock price will continue to decline.

And who is "revamping" tired old stores and modernizing that dreary country menu.

She's Bud Light-ing the place.

...Cracker Barrels are deliberately meant to reflect an old-time country store that sells bits-and-bobs, and simple comfort food. 

Masino said she will change the ;store design and atmosphere.' There will be investment in 'aging' stores. 

She hinted at a new look. 'Historically, Cracker Barrel has made limited changes to our design esthetic,' she said. 

'And we've probably relied a little too much on what was perceived to be the timeless nature of our concept.

'We began conducting a pilot remodel in two test stores. This included refreshing the interior and exterior of these stores by using a different color pallet, updating lighting, offering more comfortable seating and simplifying decor and fixtures.'

Can we say, "Hello, Applebee's generic"?

It sure feels that way.

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 28, 2024

Cracker Barrel's dumping $700M into "light, brighter, fresher" over the next three years...

Cracker Barrel expects to spend as much as $700 million over the next three years to rejuvenate the 54-year-old concept’s operations, menu and perception among hardcore fans and uninitiated consumers alike.

The comprehensive update is intended to reverse a drop in guest counts that’s currently running about 16% year-to-date. The decline has been particularly severe at dinner, according to executives.

They acknowledged that the brand is also losing market share to competitors. Research revealed that the rivals, whom the officials did not name, are outshining the chain on such fundamentals as menu appeal, value, convenience and the overall guest experience.

...and everything I've read of the Girl Wonder's plans so far doesn't address the core complaints in Sean Davis' tweet or this above paragraph. It's all window dressing. 

A creamy chicken rice casserole on a new table in a smaller dining room doesn't change lousy service. Nor does it fix the perception that Cracker Barrel corporate has no clue who its customer base is or that it would care what customers thought if it did.

All that restaurant stuff before you even begin to address the painted porch chairs.

Judging by the former Disney DEI types who are on Cracker Barrel's corporate board...

...the biscuits and gravy and big ass pancakes and snausage go long before the rainbow rockers.

Wave g'bye, Cracker Barrel.

* Our son was one of the very first computer and gaming savants in the early 90s, winning tournaments and designing "skins" for games not long after AL Gore invented the innerwebs. Unfortunately, he also had a knack for catching the first viruses. One was so virulent that it wiped his computer and all of my work and required one of his father's computer geeks to come from base with a DoD program to finally exterminate it. His uncle Bingley nicknamed him "Ebola," and it has been his nom-de-innerwebs ever since.