There were reports a year ago that CB was closing stores in various states and suffering loss of customers. So the changes in interior design and the logo may have actually been stimulated by response to a legit problem. But that in it itself doesn't mean that the hillbilly image was responsible for the decline.
Cracker Barrel reverses course on new logo after fan backlash
https://nypost.com/2025/08/26/business/c...n-backlash
I live in California and I'd hardly heard of Crackerbarrel. I couldn't have told you what they were or what they sold. There are only a handful of Crackerbarrels in this state and none at all in the SF bay area.
But they are ubiquitous in Texas. Crackerbarrel seems to me to be an old-timey Southern thing. (One of the few California Crackerbarrels is in Bakersfield, which was settled by dust-bowl Okies and where quite a few people still have Southern accents.)
This is just speculation, but maybe Crackerbarrel was eyeing expansion into bluer places like California or New York, and thought maybe they should dial back the more regional aspects. So they floated adopting a more generic architectural style and logo. But that offended the company's existing Southern customer base who liked the company as it was and thought of it as one of their own things. So they felt like the company was abandoning them.
It was more the "colonization" of sterile commercialism in a restaurant that has been known for having a lot of unique character.
It was amplified by the, perhaps false, perception that it was culturally woke in some way. Looks like it was more misguided than woke.
![[Image: lXbkvyu.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/lXbkvyu.jpeg)