Pod Insights The Sporkful Why Does Cracker Barrel Keep Making People So Mad? About this episode A few weeks ago, Cracker Barrel announced it was changing its logo — removing the old man in overalls and the barrel, updating the font, and removing the words “Old Country Store.” Longtime Cracker Barrel fans went nuts, decrying the “sterile” look. Conservative commentators tied the change to a “DEI regime” and called the new logo “woke.”
Transcript 7,018 words · 18 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:38 Dan Pashman? This episode contains explicit language, including right here at the start.
1:44 Speaker 02 Well, my friend Cracker Barrel apparently is going woke. These bastards don't learn.
1:51 Dan Pashman? Earlier this year, the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain began making some changes in an attempt to attract new customers. They evolved the menu and remodeled some stores. The internet had thoughts.
2:01 Speaker 03 Hey, my Cracker Barrel. It looks like HGTV came in there and redid the whole thing.
2:08 Speaker 04 If anybody from Cracker Barrel, even if you're the busboy at Cracker Barrel and can deliver this message, stop this immediately.
2:14 Speaker 05 I hate it. I absolutely hate it. Absolutely not. Put that shit back right now.
2:20 Dan Pashman? Cracker Barrel continued with its remodeling plans despite the online grumbling. On August 19th, the CEO Julie Messino went on Good Morning America to address the response.
2:29 Speaker 06 What's important is things that people love about Cracker Barrel, the soul of Cracker Barrel's not changing. The rocking chairs are still there, the fireplace is there, the peg game, all the things that make Cracker Barrel, Cracker Barrel, the vintage decor, it's still there and it's working. The results affirm that we're headed in the right direction.
2:46 Dan Pashman? Later that same day, though, the company announced another change, one that would spark a dumpster fire of epic proportions. They were changing their logo. People went nuts.
2:56 Speaker 07 I'm more than mad. If something ain't broke, don't fix it.
3:00 Dan Pashman? I feel so alienated from Cracker Barrel, and I'm not the only one. The new logo ditched the image of an old man in overalls, sitting on a wooden chair leaning against a barrel, and it changed the old-timey font to something more clean and modern.
3:13 Speaker 08 They just took out every element of character that the logo had, even the character himself and the barrel. It's just really sad, and no one likes it, not a single person.
3:22 Dan Pashman? The next day, Donald Trump Jr. reshared a post calling for CEO Julie Messino's resignation. It said she, quote, "scrapped a beloved American aesthetic and replaced it with sterile, soulless branding." The post tied the change to her, quote, "DEI regime." Trump Jr. added, "WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?" From there, the posts were relentless.
3:43 Speaker 09 It's a very bad move. It is getting rid of historic IP in favor of something absolutely and ridiculously generic.
3:49 Speaker 03 Here's the thing, Julie, Miss New CEO from Cracker Barrel, your new logo, it sucks. And what I think, you changed it because you wanted to remove the white man from the logo.
4:02 Speaker 10 Based on how much visceral anger I've seen online about this, I would say that's probably a vocal majority.
4:11 Dan Pashman? Less than a week later, the president himself entered the chat. "Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo," he wrote. "Make Cracker Barrel a winner again. Remember, in just a short period of time, I made the United States of America the hottest country anywhere in the world. One year ago, it was dead. Good luck."
4:28 Dan Pashman? That very day, Cracker Barrel announced it would scrap the new logo and go back to the old one. They released a statement that said, "We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel." Clearly, Cracker Barrel inspires intense devotion. But this recent issue is also just the latest in a long history of controversies at the chain. Today on the show, we're telling the whole story of Cracker Barrel to try to understand why it keeps finding itself at the center of the storm in America. This is The Forkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. To understand why people are so attached to Cracker Barrel, you have to look at its long and winding history. For
5:10 Dan Pashman? that, we're turning to historian Anthony Stenonis, who's in New Orleans, where he's lived most of his life. Anthony's research focuses on tourism in the South and how outsiders perceive the South. That's led him to look into Cracker Barrel. What's your experience with Cracker Barrel?
5:26 Speaker 10 Well, you know, I went to grad school in Nashville, you know, spending six years in middle Tennessee. I saw a lot of Cracker Barrels. And growing up in the South and doing summer vacations, we ate a lot of times at Cracker Barrel.
5:39 Dan Pashman? Classic road trip stop.
5:40 Speaker 10 Classic road trips, right? It's at the end of the interstate and, you know, you get consistency.
5:46 Dan Pashman? Did you have a favorite menu item growing up?
5:47 Speaker 10 You know, I love biscuits. Love biscuits. And they do a pretty good biscuit.
5:54 Dan Pashman? Cracker Barrel came about at a time when a lot was changing in America, especially in the South. It was started in 1969 in Lebanon, Tennessee, by a guy named Dan Evans.
6:03 Speaker 10 He is from Tennessee. He founds the restaurant close to where he grew up and comes from a political family, actually. His grandfather was in the state legislature in Tennessee. Dan Evans, before he starts Cracker Barrel, worked for his uncle, who was actually a 15-term US congressman. So Dan Evans was very familiar with the political climate of the 1960s.
6:29 Dan Pashman? Dan Evans worked at his grandfather's oil company as a distributor to local gas stations. This gave him an early insight into a big change happening in America. New interstates meant more people were driving longer distances and would need places to stop. And when they did stop, they wouldn't want to wander through a small town trying to figure out where to eat. They'd want reliable restaurants right off the highway. This trend also helped fuel the rise of fast food in America. But Evans wanted something a little different. A real sit-down restaurant serving southern classics. Fried chicken, biscuits, country ham, et cetera. So the food was one part of it. But Evans also had the idea to make the restaurant feel like an old-time general store. Back in the South's farming days, Anthony says the general store was a place where people would hang out,
7:13 Dan Pashman? chit-chatting around a literal barrel of crackers.
7:16 Speaker 10 You didn't go to the store and buy a package of crackers, right? They come in a big barrel and then the grocer would sort of scoop them out and bag them for you.
7:25 Dan Pashman? So the Cracker Barrel was sort of like the water cooler of its day.
7:29 Speaker 10 Oh, totally like the water cooler.
7:31 Dan Pashman? That idea of the general store informed the way Cracker Barrel was furnished, with barrels, of course, and also a porch with rocking chairs.
7:38 Speaker 10 So he very early on hires a local family that deals in antiques to do the decorations around the store, which is old-style farm implements. So it's very much reflecting the culture of the South. People migrating off the farms in the 50s and 60s. So it's that nostalgia, but it's also fitting in with tourists from the North who are, say, driving down to Florida, right? To go to Disney and go to the beaches. It's a way of sort of mimicking what their expectations of the South are, right? That it's supposed to be rural and countrified.
8:13 Dan Pashman? Right, kind of like going to an Irish pub in most places in America and they have this sort of like cheesy Irish iconography that isn't all that authentic, but it's what Americans think is an Irish pub.
8:24 Speaker 10 Exactly. You gotta have the leprechaun on the wall, right?
8:27 Dan Pashman? Right, right, right. In the early years of Cracker Barrel, what were some of the things they would sell in the store part that was adjacent to the restaurant?
8:34 Speaker 10 In the store part, they would sell things that were associated as stereotypical Southern, which involved the Confederate flag, which was very prominent in the 60s. Partly that's the centennial of the Civil War, but also very much a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. You would see mammy dolls, you know, little cloth dolls of African-American figures.
8:55 Dan Pashman? It was sort of depicted as the sort of Aunt Jemima-style stereotype of a black servant.
9:00 Speaker 10 Yes. I mean, that would be very common across the tourism industry in the South. Yeah, those were the kinds of things you'd see in the store, along with like candy and...
9:10 Dan Pashman? Right. What exactly were Southerners who gravitated to Cracker Barrel nostalgic for?
9:17 Speaker 10 In the context, right, of Middle Tennessee in 1969, they're nostalgic for the Jim Crow South.
9:27 Dan Pashman? Anthony says Dan Evans wanted to capitalize on this white nostalgia. In the previous few years, landmark civil rights legislation had been passed. The South was in the process of being integrated, and there was a strong backlash to all the changes.
9:41 Dan Pashman? But there was another bygone era the Cracker Barrel was designed to recall: the agrarian South. The chain started during a period just after farming became much more mechanized, when small family farms were being replaced by bigger ones. Many white people had to sell their land and were moving to larger towns and cities. Old-time general stores were disappearing, and with them, a specific way of life.
10:02 Speaker 10 The reference really isn't just to the idea of the general store, right? It's also that the general store was the center of power, right? It's economic power, but it's also political power. So if you look at Faulkner's short story, "Barn Burning", it's where the circuit-riding judge holds court. It's a very white space, and it's also a very male space.
10:26 Dan Pashman? But as with so much nostalgia, the view of the good old days was somewhat clouded.
10:30 Speaker 10 Yeah, I think that's where it gets really interesting, right? Because the merchant store is a place where small-time farmers would get exploited, right? So it's really more a nostalgia for the racial system of the South, which is an economic time, in a sense, for the white Southern customer, right? Because you were above the African-American. So even though you were dirt poor, your race made you more valuable.
10:59 Dan Pashman? I want to note that we did reach out to Cracker Barrel for comment on these various claims and to get their side of the story. They declined to answer our questions directly and instead referred us to the official company history and press releases on their website. We've included some of that information in our episode, but it doesn't address these specific questions of white nostalgia.
11:18 Dan Pashman? So let's talk a bit about the early Cracker Barrel branding. Their first logo for the first eight years was very basic. It was black and white. It was just the words Cracker Barrel in like what I think of as like Old West font. Like in the movies, you saw a poster, like a wanted poster in the Old West. The way the word wanted is always written in a specific font. It's that font. And then below it, Old Country Store. In 1977, they introduced the first iteration of the logo that they would have until now, which is this image of an old man in overalls, sitting in a wooden chair, resting his arm on a big barrel, big Cracker Barrel. And then instead of black and white, this logo, it's yellow and brown. Cracker Barrel is written in like a more ornate font.
12:02 Dan Pashman? And they keep the words Old Country Store on the logo. This old man depicted as the nickname Old Timer, they call him Old Timer. So unpack this logo for us. Like what is this logo communicating?
12:15 Speaker 10 When they come up with that logo, it's very much a moment in time, right? You're coming out of the bicentennial. More importantly, you know, the country has just seen Jimmy Carter get elected to the presidency.
12:25 Dan Pashman? Right, who himself, you know, always he billed himself as a peanut farmer. I'm just a peanut farmer from Georgia.
12:31 Speaker 10 Yeah, exactly. It's tapping into that moment in the late 1970s of celebrating Southern culture. You know, this is why Dukes of Hazzard becomes one of the top rated shows in the country and the Confederate flag, which, you know, the original stores at Cracker Barrel sold Confederate flags and Mammy dolls through the eighties. And that logo really sort of reflects that Southern nostalgia of that moment.
12:57 Dan Pashman? Cracker Barrel confirms on their website that this logo was meant to create a feeling of nostalgia, although they don't specify for what exactly. Anyway, that was 1977 when the chain had about a dozen stores. In 1981, Dan Evans took the company public to raise money to expand. In the next decade, Cracker Barrel would open more than 100 new locations, still mostly in the South. Then in the 90s, they started growing to the rest of the country.
13:20 Speaker 10 And the nostalgia of the South appeals across the country. There's a whole literature on the southernization of the United States. You know, Cracker Barrel is part of that expansion of the South outside the South.
13:37 Dan Pashman? The South almost as a brand, as an idea.
13:40 Speaker 10 The South as a brand.
13:41 Dan Pashman? Right.
13:41 Speaker 10 Yeah.
13:42 Dan Pashman? Do you have a sense of what was driving that in the 90s? I mean, I get it in 1969 when Cracker Barrel was created. It was midst of the civil rights era and the Jim Crow South was still in recent memory for many customers. Now we're talking about the 1990s, all over the country. What was driving that southernization, as you put it?
14:02 Speaker 10 What happens with that nostalgia of the Jimmy Carter years sort of continues on. And that folksiness has a genuine ring within American culture and policy. That's partly why Bill Clinton is successful in winning in the 90s.
14:18 Dan Pashman? Right, he gets elected in 1992 and also has some of that Southern charm.
14:21 Speaker 10 Yeah, so that sort of throwback to the past and to these sort of rural Southern values has an appeal.
14:31 Dan Pashman? Did the restaurants change in any way as they expanded beyond the South? Did the branding change? Did the food change? Did the way their stores were decorated change?
14:40 Speaker 10 They generally kept with the store/restaurant concept. He gets rid of gas stations in the 70s. Because of the oil crisis, it becomes too much of an issue to run gas stations. So he simplifies in the mid 70s to just focusing on restaurant and store. And so when the chain starts to go national in the 80s, they had Confederate flags and Mammy dolls as part of the store. That starts to disappear in the 90s. But then, you know, some of the baggage of being Southern was also within the store, behind the scenes.
15:18 Dan Pashman? When we return, Cracker Barrel comes up against changing times and its shareholders. Then we get to the logo controversy of today. Stick around.
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18:51 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman, and I got some big news for you. My pasta tour of Italy this fall sold out so quickly that we've already scheduled another one for October 2026. I'm teaming up once again with my friends at Culinary Backstreets to lead a group of pasta eaters on a tour of some of my favorite spots. You'll hang out with Katie Parla in Rome. We'll eat spaghetti alla sasina together in Bari, and so much more. Now, this new trip goes on sale in a couple of weeks, but if you're interested, get on the mailing list for the trip now. Because if you're on the mailing list, you'll get early access to sign up for the trip. So get on that list. Go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. Now, let's get back to historian Anthony Stenonis and Cracker Barrel.
19:35 Dan Pashman? By the 90s, Cracker Barrel had more than 100 stores. They'd expanded beyond the South, becoming an iconic part of road trips and family gatherings for Americans all over, not just those who missed the old South. Meanwhile, Dan Evans was still the CEO, but with the expansion came increased scrutiny of the company and its practices. One of those practices, an explicit corporate policy that they would not employ gay people. Now, to be clear, that was not illegal at the time. Federal law did not protect people from workplace discrimination based on their sexual orientation, even in the 90s. Here's Anthony.
20:07 Speaker 10 Yes, it wasn't illegal, but that being said, it was very rare for a company, a publicly traded company, to explicitly put in a corporate directive that we don't want. The exact phrase is "whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values." Subsequent to that directive, there's over a dozen people who get fired from Cracker Barrel. And it sparks this huge outrage. Because it's a publicly traded company, the New York Retirees Fund organizes a campaign to force Cracker Barrel to recognize gay rights.
20:44 Dan Pashman? And that New York pension fund, you're saying like they were investors in Cracker Barrel, so they were trying to use, they were using their power as shareholders?
20:50 Speaker 10 Yeah. And actually, gay activists start buying up stock to join that effort to win enough votes to reverse that policy.
21:00 Dan Pashman? How did Evans respond to that?
21:02 Speaker 10 Evans reverses the policy because he's lost the votes. So that aspect of coming out of middle Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible Belt, that gets changed.
21:12 Dan Pashman? But it doesn't sound like he had any big change of heart. It's more just that he realized it was bad for business.
21:17 Speaker 10 Oh, yeah, he doesn't have much change of heart.
21:20 Dan Pashman? Anthony says Cracker Barrel stopped selling Confederate memorabilia and Mammy dolls in the 90s, but that wasn't the end of racial strife at the company. Then a few years later, early 2000s, there's another issue with Cracker Barrel. The Department of Justice investigated Cracker Barrel for racial discrimination, both against black employees and black customers. There was a class action lawsuit. What were some of the details of what Cracker Barrel was accused of?
21:46 Speaker 10 They were accused of actually maintaining, you know, unofficially, it wasn't corporate policy, the individual stores, some of them maintained racial segregation in seating.
21:56 Dan Pashman? So they had like a black people's section of the restaurant?
21:59 Speaker 10 Yes, they would purposely sit blacks separate from whites. There were some stores, you know, that simply refused blacks any service. They would handle complaints differently for blacks and white customers. And this was found to be in multiple stores, like this was systematic within stores, particularly in the South.
22:20 Dan Pashman? According to the firm that brought the class action suit, there was evidence that Cracker Barrel employees were intentionally providing subpar service to black customers. They might make them wait longer for a table, for instance. There was also evidence that the company paid their black employees less than white employees, denied black workers promotions, segregated black workers from other staff, and ignored and perpetuated racial slurs and comments.
22:41 Speaker 10 In the end, the Justice Department took over the investigation, and then Cracker Barrel finally had to settle for like 8.7 million to reform their practices and put more oversight in place to make sure that racism wasn't systemic within the chain.
22:57 Dan Pashman? Do you have a sense of how hard they really tried to do that?
23:01 Speaker 10 Cracker Barrel wasn't alone at this moment in time, right? There's the same investigations of Denny's and I believe Shoney's was under investigation for these sorts of practices. So you have the issue of gay rights in the 90s, that gets resolved positively, and then this gets resolved positively. You know, the eyes of the country and the eyes of shareholders and the eyes of the government are very much focused that this doesn't happen again.
23:25 Dan Pashman? By the time these allegations were made in the early 2000s, Dan Evans had transitioned from being CEO to chairman of the board. Around the time the Department of Justice concluded their investigation, he stepped down. Anthony says he was pushed out. It wasn't just an issue of his values not aligning with the company anymore. These big news stories were hurting the bottom line.
23:43 Speaker 10 By the time of these issues with the Justice Department and issues of segregation, this is a chain of 400-plus stores all across the country. Local practices in the South can't exist in a chain that's serving people in California.
23:59 Dan Pashman? People in California might decide they're not going to go there because they've read something about what's been happening at restaurants in the South, even if it wasn't happening in their restaurants in California.
24:08 Speaker 10 Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's how the civil rights movement itself flares up in the early 60s, right? It starts with the traditional narrative, the sit-in movement at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They don't go to the local barbecue shop. They go to Woolworth's because it's a national chain and people in Chicago, people in New York, can join the protest. So when this comes out for Cracker Barrel in the 2000s, it's the same reaction.
24:39 Dan Pashman? After all that, Cracker Barrel became a more buttoned-up corporation. The chain kept the same decor, similar menu items, the general store vibe, their famous peg game. But in the period after the racial discrimination lawsuit was settled, Anthony says he did start seeing more black customers in Cracker Barrels in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. And then, just a few years ago, the chain's next national controversy cropped up, all around plant-based meat.
25:04 Speaker 13 And southern breakfast restaurant Cracker Barrel is getting in on the trend, adding Impossible Sausage to its menu. But Cracker Barrel's fans on Facebook aren't too happy about the addition. The announcement getting a lot of backlash on the company's Facebook page. One person even commenting, quote, "Don't ever try to push that crap in my direction."
25:26 Dan Pashman? Now, it's worth noting that this time, the backlash wasn't from liberal groups upset about the policies of the CEO. It was from conservatives who saw plant-based meat as somehow contrary to their conception of meat-eating, red-blooded Americans. The following year, 2023, Cracker Barrel hired a new CEO named Julie Messino. She had previously been at Taco Bell, a company well-known for appealing to a young demographic. She soon unveiled a strategic plan that The Wall Street Journal said was intended to attract a younger, wealthier customer base. One phase of that transformation was remodeling some of the locations.
25:58 Speaker 10 They're really uncrouching the store. The old tile Cracker Barrel was sort of a lot of stuff crammed into the store, right? Which is what an old-style general store in the South would have been. And Cracker Barrel sort of had everything a tourist might want crammed into the space. So they've widened the aisles, simplified what they have inside. So that's part of the redesign in the store. And in the restaurants, they've started to remove what they've been known for, right? The old farm equipment and to have a more streamlined, simplified, cleaner look.
26:33 Dan Pashman? Then there was the menu. They had already added some plant-based options. Now they were adding lighter dishes like grilled shrimp and more upscale choices like steak and shrimp.
26:41 Speaker 10 The original menu was farmer food, right? It's what you eat and then work in the fields all day. So now, in this day and age, they have to target a more calorie-conscious audience with shrimp and low-cal, healthier foods.
26:56 Dan Pashman? These other changes in the store, the streamlining, the changes in the restaurant, the changes in the menu, even that was getting some backlash.
27:04 Speaker 10 Yeah, that's getting backlash because the core idea of their menu as the restaurant is nostalgia, right? So you want what your grandparents had or your great-grandparents made, the family heirloom recipes, right? So yeah, when you bring in grilled shrimp, well, it's not many people in middle Tennessee were eating grilled shrimp on the farm back in the 1930s and 40s.
27:27 Dan Pashman? Right. And I would imagine that by that point, by more recent years, there's another layer of nostalgia on top, which is that now there's a couple of generations of Americans who've grown up eating at Cracker Barrel. So you have so many who who who know and love Cracker Barrel. They grew up on road trips or visiting family, or it was the place down the road, or after church, or whatever it was.
27:47 Speaker 10 Yeah.
27:47 Dan Pashman? And so even if you're not nostalgic for the 1930s, you're nostalgic for Cracker Barrel.
27:55 Speaker 10 Yeah, when you start messing with the the menu or the design, you're dealing with generations now of people, not just in the South anymore, but people in rural communities and small towns and even suburbs think of as their family space.
28:09 Dan Pashman? Right.
28:09 Speaker 10 It's no longer southern. Now it's part of the national fabric.
28:14 Dan Pashman? So even before the new logo, there were already changes and some growing backlash to those changes. But what's interesting, according to the company, these changes were doing exactly what they were intended to do. The stores that had the remodels saw their profits go up. And so, you know, it may be true, as is so often the case, that a backlash doesn't represent the majority. It's just the people who are the loudest. And then the new logo comes out.
28:39 Speaker 10 Yes.
28:40 Dan Pashman? And this new logo eliminates the old timer, the old man in the in the overalls. It eliminates the barrel. It changes the font very drastically to a very sleek, clean, sort of modern aesthetic. And this is really what puts people over the edge. This is when we see Trump post online about it. It's when we see a ton of commentary from right wing sites decrying the change as woke and advancing some sort of DEI agenda. Why? Like, why did this logo get people so upset?
29:10 Speaker 10 The logo, right, is in your face. So they could adjust the menu, right? That's in store. It's kind of unseen.
29:18 Dan Pashman? Right. You can still get your chicken fried steak, even if you don't like the fact that they added grilled shrimp.
29:22 Speaker 10 You know, you can still get your things and they could make those small adjustments. They could do the stores and do remodels of the stores and make it a cleaner look inside the store. But when you took away the logo, people who maybe hadn't been to Cracker Barrel for a year or two, right, but who still have the nostalgia of having grown up going there, they see that change.
29:43 Dan Pashman? What do you think of the new logo, Anthony?
29:46 Speaker 10 You know, I think the new logo was terrible. You know, I think it was so bland. It's sort of like Taco Bell getting rid of the bell. Right? And I think there's a different approach that Cracker Barrel could have taken. It's such a sudden change, it reminds you a little bit of Coke going to New Coke in the 1980s.
30:11 Dan Pashman? Right. I mean, I was reading that, like, you know, Aunt Jemima, when they decided to phase out this sort of racial stereotype character on the label, they did it kind of gradually. They made small changes. You know, they kept the same font. You know, it's not like overnight they completely changed everything.
30:25 Speaker 10 Yeah. And I think if Cracker Barrel wanted to modernize their logo, they should have taken that approach. And I think that's partly why this was so controversial, is it was so extreme in terms of getting rid of any reference to that original logo. A tweak instead of like bulldozing.
30:44 Dan Pashman? As we said, within a week of revealing the new logo, Cracker Barrel abandoned it and announced they'd go back to the old logo. Soon after, CNN reports that Cracker Barrel removed references to DEI and Pride from their website. So the new CEO is a woman who's driving these changes, and there was a DEI policy in place at Cracker Barrel. How much do you think those two factors played into this backlash?
31:09 Speaker 10 Oh, I think it's, when you see what's happening across the country right now, I think it's definitely part of the backlash because things are so heightened politically.
31:19 Dan Pashman? I mean, I have to say, watching some of the news clips, you know, when the negative reaction first started, Julie Messino, the CEO, went out and did some interviews. She was on Good Morning America, she was on with Jim Cracker on CNBC. And I'm watching these clips and I'm thinking, man, I'm so curious how all this would read if the CEO was a middle-aged white guy in a suit with a southern accent versus like a well-dressed blond-haired woman, who I'm sure is extremely capable, but like...
31:53 Dan Pashman? I think to the people who want that nostalgia, some of them are also nostalgic for a time when the leaders of giant companies didn't look like Julie Messino.
32:03 Speaker 10 In terms of like the transition, right? Dan Evans died about 10 years ago. So the transition from what the founder envisioned to what the company is doing now is dramatic. And yes, that in terms of what its customer base is looking for in terms of nostalgia, having a woman in charge is a problem for that customer base.
32:29 Dan Pashman? Some of the online backlash specifically points to Julie Messino's gender. Like this clip from the conservative commentator, Michael Knowles.
32:36 Speaker 14 Hey, haha, hi, I'm a lady who took over Cracker Barrel. And we're going to make it all look like a hospital cafeteria. Yeah, we are. And we're going to get rid of the cracker and the barrel.
32:48 Speaker 10 And I think Cracker Barrel is sort of between a rock and a hard place. Right? They've got their customer base, which is built around nostalgia for these various aspects of nostalgia, as you laid out. But on the other hand, as a practical business, I saw a stat that they're down 16% since the pandemic in terms of diners coming to their restaurant. So they're desperately trying to retool to draw in new customers while holding on to their loyal base of old customers. And that's a very difficult position to be in. And so, right, they've brought in new faces with new ideas that understand the modern market. So the question is, right?
33:30 Speaker 10 Does she really understand the old nostalgia, given how much this has blown up?
33:36 Dan Pashman? So Anthony, we talked a lot in this conversation about sort of Southern iconography, all of these images, the general store, the farming equipment, all of these sort of callbacks to bygone days.
33:48 Dan Pashman? How powerful do you think that type of imagery is in the South today?
33:54 Speaker 10 I would say that it's still very much a part of nostalgia of the South. It's the small town, looking back, things have changed a lot, but we're in this weird moment where there seems to be this America first, looking back to, hard to say what, it is in reality, but there is this nostalgia and the controversy itself shows, right, that it's very much a part of the South.
34:25 Dan Pashman? In our conversation here, Anthony, we've used the word nostalgia. And yes, 100%, that's a part of Cracker Barrel, that's a part of this reaction. But I wonder if there's another word we should also be adding in or another idea in addition to just, because nostalgia just sort of feels like, I want to feel warm and fuzzy, there's something sort of a little bit sweet about nostalgia.
34:51 Dan Pashman? I think also what's driving this is the fear and economic dislocation of a huge part of America.
35:02 Dan Pashman? And so it's not, it's not just like, I wish things were back the way they were in the day, it's like a feeling that back then they had a better chance at doing well and things were better and now they're not. And also the loss of small town America and the economic pressure that so many of the people who used to live in those small towns or still do are feeling, that is real.
35:23 Speaker 10 Yes, that's totally real. That's very much a part of, of the politics of today. And I think the controversy that Cracker Barrel has stumbled itself into, what is America? What is the, the America where they actually run their stores? Those small towns across the interstates where the towns are now ghost towns.
35:45 Dan Pashman? It's hard to know at this point what sort of long-term impact this recent controversy will have on Cracker Barrel. As Anthony said, the company needs to find a way to attract new customers without losing their old ones.
35:56 Speaker 10 The majority of customers, it's a focus on their family tradition, their desire to preserve their home. And so it's gotten sucked into this big political debate. And I think that's fascinating discussion in and of itself, but I think on the ground, the people who are the loyal customers, some of them are political, but you know, a lot of times it's people who don't want to discuss politics, they just want their ham.
36:21 Dan Pashman? That may be true, but even if the people upset about Cracker Barrel's changes aren't the majority of customers, that group is still big enough to make a real difference. After my chat with Anthony, there was more Cracker Barrel news. The company said they would stop their plans to remodel stores. In an announcement a few days ago, they wrote, quote, "You've shared your voices in recent weeks, not just on our logo, but also on our restaurants. We heard clearly that the modern remodel does not reflect what you love about Cracker Barrel." Now, the chain had only redesigned four of its 600-plus locations, and earlier this year, they said those four stores had seen increased sales. But the Wall Street Journal says since the logo controversy, sales are down across the board, and so is the stock price.
37:04 Dan Pashman? In Cracker Barrel's announcement, they said they'd keep the antique farm equipment, rocking chairs, and other hallmarks of the brand, writing, "The vintage Americana you love will always be here."
37:27 Dan Pashman? As I said, we did reach out to Cracker Barrel to offer them a chance to comment on this story, but they declined to answer our questions. My thanks to Anthony Stenonis, he's a historian in New Orleans. His latest book is New Orleans Pralines, not Praleens, New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia. I'd also like to thank Susie Penman, who wrote a great master's thesis on Cracker Barrel. You can find it on the University of Mississippi's website. Next week on the show, I traveled to Boston to visit Lair House, a Jewish tavern and house of learning, which claims to be the first place in history to combine these two things. That's next week. Why wait for that one? Check out last week's episode all about how to drink like a Korean. That one's up now. And hey, did you know you can listen
38:11 Dan Pashman? to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer- Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer- Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
38:53 Speaker 15 And I'm Tanya Hudson in Sulfur, Louisiana, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
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