LEBANON, Tn., August 31, 2025: On August 19, Tennessee based Cracker Barrel announced it was updating its brand, menus and restaurants under its “All the More” campaign to revamp its business after experiencing drops in customer traffic to the chain’s restaurants. On August 18, 2023, the board of Cracker Barrel announced that Julie Felss Masino would be the new CEO to replace outgoing CEO Sandra B. Cochran. Prior to joining Cracker Barrel, Masino was the president of International of Taco Bell, overseeing the restaurant operations in 32 countries.
Financially Cracker Barrel had been experiencing annual revenue drops to a low $3.07 million in 2021. Revenues increased in 2022 to $3.27 million but the number of people eating at the restaurants had been declining since 2019.
According to Eat This, Not This!, a website tracking food and restaurant news, Cracker Barrel was one of 11 restaurant chains struggling in 2024. Citing the “persistent issue” of declining “customer traffic,” the site listed Cracker Barrel as the fifth restaurant chain likely to close in the coming months. Cracker Barrel blamed the declining customer traffic on fewer people eating out due to rising prices and a lack of an effective marketing campaign by the restaurant.
To correct the declining foot traffic, Masino led the effort to revamp the company’s experience for restaurant goers led by reimagining its logo and menus, and a “refresh” of the restaurants.
Within days of unveiling its new logo, Cracker Barrel received backlash over the removal of the old man sitting next to the barrel in the original logo. Masino acknowledged the consumer backlash but told Good Morning America on August 19 that “people like what we are doing.”
One of those complaining about the new design was Donald Trump, Jr. who posted on X (formerly Twitter), “WTF is wrong with @CrackerBarrel??!”
Trump Jr.’s post suggested that the logo update was tied to the controversies over diversity, equity and inclusion.
Pushback on social media against the restaurant’s re-branding continued unabated. By August 26, restaurant officials reversed course on the new logo and said that the old logo would remain. Investors rewarded the decision by raising the value of the company’s stock by 8%, higher than the stock was worth before the new logo was unveiled.
On a post on its website, the company announced that its “new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain.”
What Masino and Cracker Barrel failed to understand was the lessons learned by Pepsi and Tropicana orange juice company. In 2009, Tropicana paid $35 million to rebrand its orange juice and lost $20 million after consumers didn’t realize that the newly packaged orange juice was orange juice. Consumers were bypassing the Tropicana orange juice because they didn’t think it contained orange juice in them.
The year before, Pepsi paid $1 million to update its logo. The Arnell Group, the advertising agency behind the Pepsi and Tropicana branding failures never recovered. It ceased operations in 2013 after being in business for 30 years.
The failed logo experiment by Cracker Barrel cost the company around $100 million in market value. Cracker Barrel’s attempt to increase traffic to its restaurants failed and an apology for its new logo may not be enough to allow it to recover because the logo fiasco just exposed long running problems with the brand and ongoing economic problems making it difficult for consumers to spend on eating out.
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The post The Price of Branding: The Cracker Barrel Lesson For Business Owners appeared first on El Paso Herald Post.
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