Enough With the Bashing of Cracker Barrel and Its Renovations

CB represents America at its best--a laid back place to have tasty comfort food with loved ones surrounded by others with Americana sprinkled around the room served by salt of the Earth Americans.

***I would be remiss if I didn’t start this defense of Cracker Barrel and its renovations acknowledging that I am not just a Cracker Barrel lover—nee a Cracker Barrel addict—but I am also a Cracker Barrel investor, as I own shares in the company. Weigh the column below accordingly.***

It has become all the rage to criticize Cracker Barrel (CB) for its efforts to renovate and to modernize its restaurants. The goal is to attract the under 40-years-old demographic that sees CB as an “old folks place” and to reengage with lapsed customers who haven’t visited CB in awhile. These two pictures represent what current CB restaurants look like.

The pictures below are what CBs will look like after the renovations.

As you can see from the before and after, CB is simply making the restaurant lighter in color tones and with nicer seating and tables. Very little of the menu is changing (the started serving alcohol a couple of years ago), so the complaints focus on the “look.” As CB Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Moore noted:

We've been very transparent about our goal of making our stores feel brighter and even more welcoming than they already are, while maintaining that country hospitality and charm that we're known for. Items like our rocking chairs, our biscuits, our peg games, antiquities on the wall, none of that is going away. We're just looking at ways to freshen up the experience so that we can open our door a bit wider for more guests.

I’ve seen numerous complaint articles on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, with the most recent coming out yesterday. I’m a bit befuddled by the whole kerfuffle.

As I noted above, I absolutely, unequivocally LOVE CB. I’ve been going to CB for as long as I can remember. I don’t take a road trip without hitting CB at least once, which my kids sometimes complained about as they hit their teens. When at the restaurant, I will eat Momma’s Breakfast with pancakes 80% of the time, with the meatloaf and two bowls of the green beans otherwise. If you are going to complain about CB, it seems to me the complaint should have been issued about five years ago when they stopped bringing multiple bottles of hot maple syrup to the table knowing that customers were taking them home. I need at least two bottles to make it through a CB pancake stack. All three of my kids solved the peg game, with my middle doing it at age four en route to Hilton Head Island and my youngest finally doing it at 14-years-old two weeks ago in Lexington, Kentucky. It took me decades to solve it myself. I try to grab Chuckles for my elderly mom when I go because it seems CB is the only store that still carries them and my mom loves them.

You ever hear of Ray and Wilma Yoder from Indiana? I admire them greatly. The Yoders made it a marital goal to visit all 645 CBs in America before the good Lord called them home. The Yoders, at 81-years-old, accomplished the task back on August 28, 2017. When I saw the story back then, I wondered if I could do it, too. I’m not sure if my lovely lady friend shares my enthusiasm for CB, but I suspect she’d go along for the ride (and a few choice items from the store). I also love the people who put pictures of themselves in black and white photos on the wall to see how long the pictures will remain up. I still might try that one.

You might be wondering why I love CB so much. It is a fair question. At its core, I think CB represents America at its best. CB is a laid back gathering place to have tasty, affordable comfort food with loved ones and friends surrounded by others doing the same with Americana sprinkled around the room served by salt of the Earth Americans trying to make ends meet. I’ve been all over Europe and other countries and there is nothing like it anywhere else. My guess is 85% of customers are Donald Trump voters, which is why I took a group of Europeans reporters in Ohio to cover the 2016 presidential election and the appeal of Trump to the CB in Zanesville. They found the whole experience fascinating (and they loved the food, too).

So, I just don’t get why a new coat of paint and a slight upgrade in furniture is causing so much consternation. Nothing about the renovations changes anything I wrote in the second sentence in the paragraph above this one. The fact of the matter is I decided to invest in CB BECAUSE OF the renovations and its goal to broaden their appeal to under 40s and lapsed customers (i.e., making more money is good for the stock price). I hope the furor over the remodel dies down in the coming months, so CB can focus on doing what it does best: fill up American bellies with a great meal at a reasonable price as they are reminded about childhood memories by decorations and candy you can’t get elsewhere anymore. You want to get me to sit down and talk turkey sometime, invite me to a Cracker Barrel and I’ll be there with bells on.

P.S. As a long time fan of Bayern Munich and star striker Thomas Müller, I was disappointed to see him turn down the offer from FC Cincinnati. I was more disappointed to then see him sign with Vancouver Whitecaps "through an atypical but significant mechanism in MLS's single-entity structure called the Discovery List.” People often ask me why I don’t go to Columbus Crew matches given my love of soccer (I was an inaugural season ticket holder when they first came to Columbus). As someone who hasn’t missed a Manchester City match in years, I find it hard to watch MLS matches because of the obvious lower quality of skills and players. A forty-yard trap in the Premier League lands six inches from the recipient. In the MLS, it lands six feet away after being trapped. The other reason I ignore MLS is because of signings like Müller (and Lionel Messi). The big name players ALWAYS go to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and other big market cities. I understand that might be good for the league and televisons ratings, but it is bad for the majority of teams that play in smaller cities. Hopefully, this habit gets broken soon. On a related note, the Müller swap also highlights that Ohio is seen as an inferior place to call home. I think Müller would have loved living in Cincinnati, but his impression of Ohio clearly wasn’t high.