I was genuinely shocked to see a backlash to the coverage of the Cracker Barrel story.
As I wrote earlier today, Fox News reported that the Board at Cracker Barrel was warned that the rebrand of the restaurant chain was a disaster waiting to happen. And, while investors often criticize management for decisions, in this case, the criticisms were based on a reality that was obvious who weren’t trapped in the bubble that most corporate managers are today.
It’s a good story, and the affair should be a case study for everybody in MBA programs. One of the lessons is that an MBA can teach you how to manage money, but getting mired in fads and jargon can lead you astray. In other words, an MBA can help you run the internal operations of a company, but common sense and creativity help you build a business.
You have to understand your customers. That should be business 101, but in the era of “Stakeholder Capitalism” and making corporations into ideological factories, people are fed up.
The real reason everyone was so enraged by Cracker Barrel ruining its logo.
Thank God they changed it back. @RealBrittHughes pic.twitter.com/xF232FnrSL
— MRCTV (@mrctv) August 27, 2025
It’s an important lesson, but one that is receiving a lot of pushback from intellectuals who, I would bet my bottom dollar, don’t visit Cracker Barrel. They are upset that the CEO is being criticized, with some referring to it as “cancel culture,” and they are deeply troubled by the entire story. And it’s not just woke people who are complaining–the common thread is that they are intellectuals. Some of these people I often agree with, others not at all.
It’s truly bizarre. Every Taco Bell, Starbucks, Mcdonalds, etc has a modern look.
These people are insane.
— DeathlyHarvest (@DeathlyHarvest) August 27, 2025
I am not a regular Cracker Barrel customer, although it happens to be at the midpoint between home and where a good friend lives, so we eat there when we get together. It seems nice enough, and I understand the appeal, even though it is not my taste. Neither are dive bars, bars of any kind, or thousands of other places and products. I will never buy from American Eagle, and it has nothing to do with disgust (or approval) of the company. I just don’t wear jeans or look like Sydney Sweeney.
I think you underestimate the importance of a $700 million investment and a $100 million loss in market value. That is not “no reason.” If the loss was predictable, it was obviously a bad idea.
— David Strom (@DavidStrom) August 27, 2025
The criticism–which in some places was pretty intense–seemed irrational. Any decision that garners so much backlash against a company, a precipitous decline in the stock price, and that was part of a $700 million strategy, should get a lot of scrutiny and criticism. Why wouldn’t every business reporter in the country try to analyze it? It would be insane not the dive deeply into a business decision that had so much impact.
Also, “ignored advice from an investor?” WTF is this transparent PR from a disgruntled investor? If you wanted to be listened to, be in management, not just a guy who owns a bunch of publicly traded stock.
— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) August 27, 2025
Gee. A public company listening to an investor never happens. Why would you? They are only a partial owner in the company, after all, and CEOs obsess about their stock value because they want to please investors.
‘Trying to do something nice for the world’ includes when management increases (not decreases) shareholder value, believe it or not.
— SGreen1117340 (@sgreen1117340) August 27, 2025
The answer to why these people are upset is easy: the story is related to MAGA, or perhaps more precisely, class.
He’s the dude who owns Steak ‘n Shake and has already entered the culture wars via changing fry oil to tallow. https://t.co/G1WYGz4ua1
— ChzBurger (@Chz_Burger) August 27, 2025
Tallow tastes better and is healthier. People like that they changed the fry oil, but since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. promotes it, it is now bad and culture war material. OK.
The weird MAGA hatred of the Cracker Barrel rebrand is… strange. But, that said, it clearly was a very dubious rebrand so the investor was right. Cracker Barrel is not going to morph into upscale urban trendy chain.
— Clark H (@Clarksterh) August 27, 2025
Ironically, I think President Trump and MAGA jumped in front of a parade that had already gathered. It didn’t take a genius to understand that this was profoundly stupid. It was predictable and predicted. And while Cracker Barrel’s customer base is probably more positive toward Trump than a random sample, it’s not like the company is related to MAGA in any way, and nobody goes there because of politics.
But President Trump weighed in on the matter, and that set these people off. And one of the reasons it set these people off is they don’t like the kind of people who go to Cracker Barrel.
Cracker Barrel:
Adopting the world’s first moving logo—with its own soundtrack! pic.twitter.com/YO0g5qOqhP
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) August 27, 2025
When they think of the restaurant, they think of icky people. Rubes. THOSE kinds of people. And worst of all, those people moved the needle and forced a company to bend the knee to them.
I seriously could just tick off buzz words with these people, its a disease. It happens at every High Tech customer conf. I go to.
— Elephant in room (@dzmanliberty) August 27, 2025
That they are the customers is not the point. Generally speaking, you would think a company being sensitive to its customers’ tastes would be considered good. But, as with Bud Light, intellectuals think that the customers suck and the companies should, of course, try to replace them.
In other words, I believe the defense of the Cracker Barrel CEO, Julie Felss Masino, has everything to do with class and nothing to do with whether the story should be covered. Normies won a battle with a credentialed member of the better class of people, and they want the story buried because it hurts their pride.
Several people I exchanged tweets with continued to assert that it was a non-story. That’s clearly not true. They just don’t like the story.
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