Cracker Barrel Is Dead. Its Woke CEO Killed It With Gay Nonsense

Cracker Barrel’s new logo — and its miserable attempt to reinvent itself — is obviously a complete disaster, whether in terms of customer backlash or the company’s stock price.

But the real reason Cracker Barrel has been struggling is that its service and food quality nosedived after Covid, and instead of fixing that, the company and its woke executives decided to go full Bud Light and taste the rainbow and dare its customers to object.

They stopped bringing you biscuits and cornbread as a matter of course, then they shrunk them. The food started to taste and look reheated instead of freshly prepared, and the service got slower and sloppier. Everyone who’s been a loyal customer over the years has experienced this. It’s undeniable.

Those are admittedly tricky problems to fix, especially given how service quality everywhere has sucked after Covid. It’s hard to find wait staff and cooks who always show up when they’re supposed to and take pride in their work.

Cracker Barrel executives refused to address those problems — problems that any customer would’ve pointed out had they bothered to ask. Instead, the executives went all-in on woke alphabet BS: DEI this, BLM that, LGBT whatever.

Because that’s what people want at an old country diner: gay race communism shoved in their faces.

The stupid rebrand in which executives stripped every last bit of charm and character from the company and its restaurants and stores was just the latest in a long line of attempts to set money on fire by breaking what didn’t need to be fixed and refusing to fix what was obviously broken.

Cracker Barrel had the simplest restaurant model possible, and it was one that made people fall and stay in love with the brand for decades: comfort food in a setting that reminded you of your grandparents’ home. The food was good, the people were kind, and the setting felt like a loving home filled with people who cared about each other. That was it.

And the moronic executives who’ve now destroyed something like $2 billion worth of that company’s value since 2020 have decided the last little bit of charm left in the place needed to have its soul ripped out and covered up with shiplap and geometric artwork and consultant-approved off-white paint. Forget your grandmother’s home cooking after church — this is now IHOP by Joanna Gaines, complete with gay pride rainbows and in-your-face DEI sloganeering.

Cracker Barrel wasn’t just a company or a restaurant. It represented a slice of Americana that millions would desperately like to return to. A time where people worked with their hands, and prayed before meals, and didn’t bother locking their doors at night. The old soda signs reminded us that our money wasn’t always worthless and our country wasn’t always run by greedy bankers. We used to be a country that built things and conquered the frontier.

That’s the feeling that Cracker Barrel used to evoke, and it’s what made its customers so loyal. It’s why people would stop there for lunch during a long road trip instead of just grabbing fast food and getting back on the highway. It’s why people were happy to wait 30 minutes for a table after Sunday School and happily mill about the store until their table was ready.

And it’s that feeling and that America that the woke parasites in charge of Cracker Barrel deliberately sought to maliciously destroy. They refused to fix the actual problems and instead decided the real problem was their own customers, whom they set out to reeducate.

I hope they had their fun, because Cracker Barrel is done. They killed it, wrapped the corpse in a rainbow flag, and then made it do a little puppet show in New York City for the entertainment of all their woke little friends. If the stupid woke CEO Julie Felss Masino had the sense to lose the dumb prop glasses and stop looking down her nose at the millions of people who used to frequent Cracker Barrel, it would’ve been obvious to see.

But no. It was beyond her capabilities. It’s not that she’s dumb. Poor woke little Julie is just plain “eg-no-ra-moose.”

Sean Davis is CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn. He was named by The Hill as one of the top congressional staffers under the age of 35 for his role in spearheading the enactment of the law that created USASpending.gov. Sean received a BBA in finance from Texas Tech University and an MBA in finance and entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].