Cracker Barrel - Destroying The Brand

MACKTEXAS said:
I'm sorry to see any business going through difficulties, but the one eating establishment I miss the most is Luby's Cafeterias where we could go through a line and pick out exactly what we wanted - no waiting for a table, no waiter who disappeared when most needed. Cafeterias fell out of favor with the public, at least in Texas. Could be that home style cooking like Cracker Barrel offers is also losing favor. I don't know that; it's just a guess.
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Born/raised/lived in Texas most of my life. Loved loved loved Luby's! They had a wide choice of entrees and hubby and I could both be happy with our choices. I could get liver and onions (yum!) and he could have something smothered in gravy (yuck).

Funny story: When my grandson was about 18 months old, we went to Luby's. I chose a berry pie for dessert. He had never had anything sweet like that. With his Mom's permission, I gave him a taste of the pie. His face went from surprise to a huge grin. I had to share the rest of that pie with him. We still laugh about that.
 
About a year ago, we got a Cracker Barrel and their food is delicious. I only eat there about once every two months because I always get the breaded chicken and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy and I know it is definitely not healthy. The place is always busy. So far, nothing has changed in our store as far as the sign, front porch or the store inside.
 

IrishEyes said:
This article tells about all the problems Cracker Barrel has had over the years and it's not just due to the Logo being changed.
If you are interested in reading it.
From gas stations to a controversial logo change: The history of Cracker Barrel in photos
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Sounds like Cracker Barrel had a long history of making bad business decisions. Getting into controversial politics is probably not good for business, declining quality in food, and changing the feel of the business in an attempt to make more money, while losing the interest of their base. I'm hardly the expert on this stuff, but that's what I take as a possible explanation from the article. It was just setting itself up for the straw to break the camel's back.
 
I had CB a couple of times. Yummy, not too healthy food.

Any restaurant that has excessive decor bothers me. How do they dust and keep it clean.

A&W Canada is renovating many of their fast food restaurants to a cleaner style. Itā€™s not going over well.
 
IrishEyes said:
There was a tavern in Chicago we used to go to that served shelled peanuts on every table to munch on while you wait for food or drank. You just tossed the shells on the floor, it was a tradition there. Of course they were told they had to stop the floor thing and honestly it ruined the appeal to many.
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Yes, Texas Roadhouse used to do that but got sued for fall injuries, so the fun had to end.
from Yahoo
 
squatting dog said:
I still miss the automat

A chapter of American history quietly drew to a close in New York City on April 9, 1991, when the countryā€™s last Horn & Hardart Automat shut down. During the Depression, there were hundreds of these Automats, mostly in New York City, dispensing macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and coconut cream pies from their famous windowed, coin-operated compartments. David Isay visited the last of them, on 200 East 42nd Street, on the day it closed.
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I have always wanted to go to an Automat. I saw a great documentary on it a year or so ago: The Automat - Wikipedia
 
911 said:
I would imagine many posters have eaten at a dining hall on the campus of a major university. Itā€™s unbelievable of the variety of foods that are offered. No one leaves hungry and there is so much variety that everyone can find something they like. I have visited many colleges and universities in my lifetime and of course, I have my favorites.

If I were to list my first and second choice it would be Penn State (main campus) and Ohio State (main campus). The best part are the prices. The students use their campus ID card that has money already prepaid on it. I pay cash, but get the same prices, which are only a fraction of what I would pay at a restaurant.
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I started college at Ohio State. I can only hope the food has improved. In 1986, it was awful! Not that anybody cared. šŸ˜
 
Nathan said:
Never heard of Cracker Barrel until about 15 years ago, when they opened one in the nearby city. Met a couple former co-workers there for lunch. Food was OK, kind of old fashioned country cooking. I'm surprised a chain restaurant could compete, there's a local 3 store country cafe chain called Molly Brown's that draws the local folks, very good country cooking.
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See that's an interesting observation. Because we have a place in Vancouver Washington that does the same thing as Panda Express. But they've been doing it for 20 years before Panda came in.

The owners did tell me they worried when Panda showed up how their business would suffer, however their business is actually gone up, because of their Word of Mouth advertising.
 
Babs2u said:
I read somewhere that the logo change was for survival. Fewer people are interested in nostalgia.
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Must have been more people interested than they thought considering the stock was down nearly $100M the first day alone. They undercalculated, I do believe. šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø I have read that the CEO is rushing to do damage control and pretend that people like it but she's just getting ignored.
 
squatting dog said:
I still miss the automat

A chapter of American history quietly drew to a close in New York City on April 9, 1991, when the countryā€™s last Horn & Hardart Automat shut down. During the Depression, there were hundreds of these Automats, mostly in New York City, dispensing macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and coconut cream pies from their famous windowed, coin-operated compartments. David Isay visited the last of them, on 200 East 42nd Street, on the day it closed.
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One of my favorite older sci fi films, Dark City. has a couple of scenes at the beginning where the main character visits an automat. I knew these things existed at one time, and it almost seems like I can remember being in one when I was little, but maybe not. Why I would have known about them, I'm not sure. But "Automat!" What does that mean? A car wash? A laundry? A food dispenser?
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I can kind of understand the problem of the logo in the South of the US. A "cracker' is a racial slur meaning "dumb, poor, uneducated white person". In the North, the restaurant was deemed a place where "crackers" ate, meaning blacks weren't exactly welcomed.
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A cracker barrel is a barrel in which soda crackers were shipped. These barrels were often found in country stores (aka general stores). The restaurant wanted to evoke an old-fashioned, homey place - like a general store.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
In the North, the restaurant was deemed a place where "crackers" ate, meaning blacks weren't exactly welcomed.
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I don't think that's entirely true. I grew up in New York State, and I never heard of the "cracker" in Cracker Barrel being construed as "cracker" in the poor-white-trash sense. Everyone I knew believed it was the cracker barrel as @WheatenLover described, which I believe is the correct origin of the chain's name.
 
Disgustedman said:
See that's an interesting observation. Because we have a place in Vancouver Washington that does the same thing as Panda Express. But they've been doing it for 20 years before Panda came in.

The owners did tell me they worried when Panda showed up how their business would suffer, however their business is actually gone up, because of their Word of Mouth advertising.
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Several years back, the national chain Pizza Hut thought they could swoop into this small town and take over the pizza business. The townsfolk stood loyal to the long time local pizza place- Pizza Hut went out of business within a couple years.
 
IrishEyes said:
This article tells about all the problems Cracker Barrel has had over the years and it's not just due to the Logo being changed.
If you are interested in reading it.
From gas stations to a controversial logo change: The history of Cracker Barrel in photos
Click to expand...
Looks like a lot of that stuff was 20+ years ago. I have read some opinions on the internet that food quality has gone down, they could have definitely done something about that short of all this mess. They had well established infrastructure. Larger portions, donations to food banks, large playgrounds (they are mostly not in cities), bull riding. Okay, not bull riding.
 
MoBeans said:
In our motor home days we spent many a night behind a Cracker Barrel. That, the Elks clubs and Walmart are a great nationwide network of places on the road that allow overnight camping. Hope Cracker Barrel doesn't ruin that.
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I'm afraid they will... Most Wal-marts have stopped the practice.
 
KSav said:
I started college at Ohio State. I can only hope the food has improved. In 1986, it was awful! Not that anybody cared. šŸ˜
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It has changed tremendously. There are about 7 different stations with all kinds of food, which is mostly made in house.
 

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