Out of the loop

• They came up with a new, sterile/bland, modern, phone-friendly logo (inciting incident).
• A bunch of conservative influencers checked for disapproval if the change amongst their viewers.
• They decided it was enough to turn it into a culture war issue.
• Others in their ecosystem saw the resultant viewership spikes and followed suit.
• The mainstream conservative media saw an opportunity to cash in and amplified the outrage.
• Conservative media consumers adopted the outage as their own opinions and became vocally outraged.
• Cracker Barrel recognized a threat to their profits and immediately reversed course to appease the noisy idiots.

The funny part is that for anyone who doesn't give a shit, it's a net neutral because the new logo was shit anyway and the conservative outrage is just pointless, moronic noise.

TIL the word "foofaraw"

Cracker barrel decided they were going to change the logo

And to be fair, in most respects, the new logo was pretty bland and corporate, I don't think anyone particular liked it.

But if you don't tend to eat at cracker barrel, you didn't really care.

But cracker barrel's target demographic is somewhat older, conservative, white, and obsessed with old-timey Americana bullshit, so they took this logo change as a direct insult to that southern-fried all-American fantasy they hold so dear and had a hissy fit about it.

And with the backlash, cracker barrel rolled back the logo change.

Those same cracker barrel aficionados then started trumpeting about this being some sort of conservative victory in the culture wars.

Which is kind of baffling to liberals, because we didn't particularly care to begin with. If we had to have an opinion, most of us would probably have agreed that the new logo sucked, but we weren't going to be major cracker barrel customers either way so it wasn't worth getting worked up over.

And then in the midst of all of this, cracker barrel decides to roll back some of their DEI initiatives. Some think that they manufactured this logo controversy to act as a smokescreen so they could do that without it being noticed

Some ad exec earned his keep.

I haven't thought of cracker barrel in years.

"Hey let's change the logo. Nope. Boring as fuck. Get rid of the charming shit. People will flip out. We'll be in the news. And we'll just go back after. Profit."

It really was an odd choice.

Foofaraw

My pet theory is that the board of directors sold stock, made announcement,then bought stock and reversed announcement.

Otherwise is its a failing company thrashing around trying to stay alive.

Folks on the right thought taking the Cracker and Barrel out of Cracker Barrel was "woke".

Conservatives need to be upset about something, anything other than the catastrophic consequences of their own actions.

Racists gonna racist.

It's not the employees either... I've worked with a few, and overall the tone at their corporate is pretty inclusive since some time ago. They purged a bunch of problematic folks at least a decade or more back and have been doing better. They've spent the past 2-3 years trying to branch out and become more appropriate for modern and widespread audiences, including a store that was basically a completely different restaraunt (not named the same either).

Then a minor change which should otherwise be "meh" got noticed by those who romanticize the 50's and it became a target.

The resulting wave of rich douchebags pushing that they were now woke caused stock to drop, which they then reacted to because shareholders gonna sharehold... They are reverting the logo and have attempted to quietly remove the DEI and inclusion public documents to try to avoid the Trump machine more.

Eh. I liked several of the folks who work there, but if the company falls I don't think they will be all that surprised after the past few years (both politically, and corporate mishaps).

Some business or other, I think they sell crackers or barrels, it’s unclear from branding, rebranded with a modernist logo just like the ones from the 1960s Saul Bass golden age.

Apparently this is offensive to some weaklings now.