Cracker Barrel reported earnings Wednesday for the first time since the company ignited a cultural firestorm by revealing a modern rebrand of its old-timey logo in August.
Julie Masino, the restaurant chain’s CEO, referenced the ordeal repeatedly in Wednesday’s earnings call, noting that Cracker Barrel is working to regain its footing as it grapples with declining foot traffic from the rebranding controversy.
“The feedback we’ve received from our guests in recent weeks on our brand refresh and store remodel has shown us just how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel,” Masino said on the call. “We thank our guests for sharing their voices and love for the brand and telling us when we’ve misstepped.”
Cracker Barrel plans to tread carefully for future changes and will introduce a new “front porch feedback” plan to check in with its customers more often.
Masino said that while “traffic is down since 8/19”—the day of the infamous rebrand—loyalty signups are soaring.
Impact from the backlash expected
Cracker Barrel expects to see the fallout from the August controversy show up in its next quarter results. The company revised its expected 2026 fiscal year revenue down from previous estimates, from $3.5 billion to $3.45 billion, noting that it anticipates a 7% decline in store traffic.
The company said that its over-55 customer base has remained mostly consistent, but that it has seen declining traffic in younger cohorts, particularly in the Southeast.
Cracker Barrel on Wednesday reported $868 million in revenue in the quarter that ended on August 1, prior to its logo fiasco.
Same-store restaurant sales were up 5.4% from a year ago, with retail sales dipping by around 1%. While the company bested revenue estimates of $855 million, it fell short on earnings per share.
Shares of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (Nasdaq: CBRL) dropped after the earnings report and were down about 7.6% in premarket trading Thursday as of this writing.
Not yet over the barrel
Designed to modernize a drab brand and bring in new audiences, Cracker Barrel’s $700 million marketing overhaul instead became a lightning rod among traditionalists who denounced the cleaner logo and rejected updates to make its cluttered dining spaces brighter and more welcoming.
Among the offenses, the restaurant even tweaked the language on the iconic peg game that customers play while they wait for their food, removing the classic text that declares a poor player an “EG-NO-RA-MOOSE.”
Conservatives slammed Cracker Barrel’s planned update as “woke” and “soulless” and framed it as cultural capitulation, a pushback that dented the company’s value by $100 million.
The backlash escalated all the way to the president of the United States, who waded into the furor to decry the changes.
“Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before,” President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that if the company played its cards right it would have a “billion dollars” in free publicity.
On X, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff said that he had spoken with the company’s leadership, which thanked Trump for expressing his opinion of the rebrand.
Shortly after Trump weighed in, Cracker Barrel said it would roll back the update, restoring its 1977 logo featuring the “old timer” known as Uncle Herschel and vowing to reverse aesthetic updates at a handful of its 660 locations.
“We want longtime fans and new guests to experience the full story of the people, places, and food that make Cracker Barrel so special,” Masino said on the call. “That’s why our team pivoted quickly, switched back to our old timer logo, and has already begun executing new marketing, advertising, and social media initiatives, leaning into uncle Hershel and the nostalgia around the brand.”
The incident may ultimately prove to be a win for Cracker Barrel, a brand that’s more accustomed to being a background feature in America’s endless landscape of mediocre chain eateries than a topic of national conversation.
The rebrand flopped spectacularly, but it sparked a massive outpouring of nostalgia for the corporate chain in the process. More than a month later, we’re still talking about Cracker Barrel.
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