The tactics that forced the new woke CEO of a wholesome American company to abandon plans to transform it into a progressive, anti-family counterfeit should be a blueprint for how conservative Christians can reclaim cultural ground.
Over the last two weeks, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store took America on a rollercoaster of corporate self-sabotage. As we disembark and try to catch our breath, it’s fair to say that Cracker Barrel customers across the heartland have less of an appetite for down-home fixins and more of a bad case of whiplash.
Pass the sweet tea and a heat pack, please.
On August 18, the chain unveiled a minimalist logo as part of a $700 million rebranding push, ostensibly to “modernize” its image. What ensued was a firestorm of backlash, a stock plunge erasing over $200 million in value, a Trump tweet (there’s always a Trump tweet), and then a frantic reversal. By August 26-27, the company announced it was restoring the classic logo with the “Old Timer” and the barrel.
This botched facelift ignited an inferno. It’s not as if many didn’t already know the cheese has been slipping off the left side of the cracker at the Barrel of late. Still, this episode showcased the brutalization of a beloved Southern brand known for embodying patriotism and Christian-friendly hospitality by leftist ideologues hell-bent on imposing their agenda.
The debacle began when new CEO Julie Felss Masino, a Chicago transplant of Taco Bell fame, proclaimed the rebrand a triumphant evolution. The famous logo featuring the “Old Timer,” aka Uncle Herschel, had been axed in favor of a barren, text-only outline, while redesigns threatened to purge the store of its rustic antiques and warm woods in favor of sterile modernity. Masino claimed “overwhelmingly positive” internal vibes, but the market disagreed, with shares plummeting 14 percent in a single day.
This uproar, however, is about far more than the redesign. “Why do you care so much about a logo?” many asked. Because it’s not about a logo, it’s about what the logo and the brand represent.
Over the last few years, the left has rewritten history books, torn down monuments, and purged our heritage with one goal in mind: sending the message that white, Christian, Southern Americans are the bad guys.
So with the removal of the Old Timer, millions of Americans rightly saw the Cracker Barrel move as yet another example of the erosion of our old-school, Americana essence — patriotic, pro-Christian, and unapologetically Southern.
Viewed in the context of larger, insidious cultural shifts, the rebrand reeked of another progressive crusade by soulless corporate bureaucrats targeting the last lingering traces of traditional American values.
In other words, the woke, corporate left can’t even let us have our family-friendly road-trip stops. Enough is enough.
The Change: From Folksy Charm to Leftist Sterility
Revolutions start slowly, then they accelerate rapidly. Cracker Barrel’s metamorphosis wasn’t abrupt. Masino, who was installed in 2023 to boost sales, immediately unleashed a “strategic transformation” tainted with progressive ideology — but it turns out that the company’s devolution had been well underway for at least a decade.
Conservative firebrand Robby Starbuck unearthed how Cracker Barrel had cozied up to the far-left Human RIghts Campaign (HRC) sometime in the 2010s, hosting pronoun trainings at its Tennessee headquarters and sponsoring events pushing transgenderism and child gender transitions. It then started bankrolling “all ages” Pride parades, including Nashville Pride and Third River City Pride, exposing kids to drag queens and explicit antics.
Alongside its embrace of the LGBT agenda, the company dove headlong into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) with employee resource groups (ERGs) segregated by race and orientation, a “diverse suppliers” quota favoring non-whites, and pamphlets preaching “safe zones” against “heterosexist” speech — code for silencing biblical truth. Many of these resources have since been scrubbed from the company’s website.
The Federalist eviscerated the moves as “gay nonsense,” slamming executives for ditching food fixes to “taste the rainbow” like Bud Light’s folly. The “ugliest, most soulless” logo epitomized the shift — replacing the patriarchal Old Timer with bland inclusivity, courtesy of monocultural corporate carpetbaggers erasing regional soul.
While the top brass tried to spin the rebrand as a forward-looking marketing effort to attract new customers, the reality was cultural arson — progressive elites foisting ideology on a heartland staple born in 1969 Tennessee.
Company co-founder Tommy Lowe, now 93, told Fox News, “It was always a country store for country people,” adding that the new leadership “just doesn’t understand.”
No, they didn’t. But they might now.
The Backlash: A Righteous Uprising
The response was epic, driven by new media heavyweights. On X, outrage branded the logo “sterile.” Viral videos from Collin Rugg and Robby Starbuck drew millions of views, sparking calls for boycotts until DEI and Pride cash dried up.
Even President Trump weighed in, urging Cracker Barrel to confess the rebrand was a “total loser” and urging a return to the old logo. The White House amplified Trump’s post with the simple truism: “Go woke, go broke.”
Shares nosedived from $45 to under $39, signaling investor dread over alienating core customers. The uproar even forced Cracker Barrel’s first tweet in nine years.
Fundamentally, this saga exposes America’s cultural divide. Cracker Barrel symbolized patriotic, Christian nostalgia — a refuge from urban leftism.
Writer Hayden Daniel nailed it: Cracker Barrel’s purge erases “nostalgic charm” for monocultural blandness, alienating patrons.
In polarized times, such hubris signals contempt for faith and family, fueling notions of a progressive scheme to dismantle Southern heritage with woke carpetbagging.
The Reversal: Take the Win, But Proceed with Caution
By August 26, Cracker Barrel buckled. An email vowed: “Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain.” They also clarified the reversal on their website.
The company has now ditched ties with HRC, scrubbed (then hid, then axed) the Pride sponsorships, dissolved divisive ERGs, and redirected giving to “unifying” causes like food insecurity.
Starbuck characterized the caving as a victory but urged vigilance to ensure the company continued its complete purge of DEI and LGBT agendas.
Some have scoffed at the initial “sorry, not sorry” tone. That’s understandable. Personally, I think we should take the win — but watch them like a hawk.
Lessons for Christians: Flexing Our Consumer Muscle
Christians should view this crack-up as a blueprint for reclaiming cultural ground. For too long, we’ve watched elites hijack wholesome American brands like Cracker Barrel (and Disney, Dove, Kellogg’s, and so on), funneling our dollars to anti-family agendas like child-exposed Pride spectacles and transgender indoctrination.
But this latest saga proves our power: Boycotts and populist demand forced a U-turn, ending Pride funding, DEI nonsense, and cultural erasure meant to write Southern, Bible-believing Christians and country folks not just out of the history books but even out of corporate America.
In fact, we should push them to go even further.
David Marcus suggested that “If I was Cracker Barrel I’d run an ad showing families in churches, of three or four denominations, getting fidgety from comically too long sermons. Then show all the families at Cracker Barrel, with the slogan, Church feeds your soul, we fill your belly.” He’s not wrong.
We must flex this muscle relentlessly, demanding that companies uphold family-friendly, pro-American branding that honors Christian values — no more “woke” rebrands stripping our heritage or promoting perversion.
As CBN News celebrated, this change demonstrates that consumer unity can counter leftist overreach. And churches and ministries should also take note: Communicate values clearly, or face backlash.
In a divided nation, our wallets are weapons — wield them to demand neutrality on politics, focusing on wholesome hospitality that unites rather than divides.
Because, again, this isn’t just about a logo. It’s about standing up to those who hate you and everything you stand for, especially when what you stand for is family-friendly, biblical values.
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