Investors have suddenly found no comfort in comfort food.
On Thursday, the iconic Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurant chain suffered a precipitous decline in its stock price, off as much as 12 percent in trading on Nasdaq as of early afternoon.
The selloff followed the company’s controversial rebranding effort, which some have described as “woke.”
But is it really? Perhaps. At present, however, the evidence for wokeness as the rebranding’s inspiration seems rather thin.
Combined with other factors — more on those in a moment — that paucity of evidence suggests that investors might want to buy low.
In other words, the market has anticipated a Bud Light– or Target-style conservative boycott that probably will not occur.
As for the rebranding itself — for reasons only the company’s executives can explain — Cracker Barrel has decided to mess with success by modernizing its restaurants.
According to CNN, that modernization effort involves eliminating the “country-themed trinkets” from the restaurant’s walls and ceilings. The company also removed the man and the barrel from its logo, opting instead for a simpler design.
I loathe this new Cracker Barrel logo. The original iconic logo always made me think about eating at my grandparents’ house in South Carolina. This new logo invokes absolutely no feeling whatsoever. It’s soulless, generic, and completely devoid of character. pic.twitter.com/glSEitrQ6Z
— Lee Steinhauer (@GroupSteinhauer) August 20, 2025
Have you been to a Cracker Barrel in the last year?
Speaking about the company’s future in 2024, CEO Julie Felss Masino sounded like she had taken too many marketing classes.
“The way we communicate, the things on the menu, the way the stores look and feel … all of these things came up time and time again in our research as opportunities for us to really regain relevancy,” she said.
Thus, if anything dooms the company, it will be the failure of its executives to gauge the national mood.
In the age of wokeness and its ongoing decline, the last thing exasperated consumers want is an “Old Country Store” restaurant that seeks to “regain relevancy.”
No doubt Cracker Barrel could modernize in some ways without harming its brand. But if modernization comes at the expense of what consumers perceive as tradition and character, then they will object.
On the other hand, assuming Cracker Barrel’s marketing geniuses did not ruin the menu, the company’s downturn seems likely to be temporary.
For one thing, many conservatives probably will examine this budding “controversy” and experience a bit of boycott fatigue. After all, this does not feel like a Bud Light-style effort to cram transgender madness down beer-drinkers’ throats. It feels, in fact, like a foolish rebranding effort.
Moreover, no one doubts that the tide has turned against wokeness. Some, therefore, might look at the indignant reaction to Cracker Barrel and say, “Are we still doing this?”
In short, if we need a magnifying glass to find the woke elements in the Cracker Barrel rebranding, then do we really want to imitate woke liberals whose entire existence consists of inventing silly reasons for outrage? Or would we rather judge the company’s changes on their merits?
If the changes don’t bother you, then enjoy your dumplings.
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