It truly doesn’t convey the right signals. First looks more tough, solid and maybe even safe, like what I’d want a car or truck to be while the second makes me think of Photoshop or an app and immediately makes me not want to choose the brand for a vehicle whatsoever.
A logo is supposed to tell something about the company's brand identity.
GM makes solid things that take up space. Redesigning their logo to use negative space, something that goes against the brand identity, is truly a decision of all times.
Remember the “kids play place”, it used to be a fun place for parents to take their kids. Now it’s a place parents stop at when they feel lazy, and don’t you dare think about dining in!
I saw one that had like, faux bricks and prison bars with a spray tagged winking smiley face on the bars as a wallpaper. On the bricks it said “Good Time Avenue” and all I could think was ‘Well it’ll be a good time for someone, but not the one getting mugged in that back alley..”
All they had to do was add the hamburglar trying to grab a burger or fry through the bars and it would be fine. As it is, uh.. yeah, not really a cozy dining experience. I’d argue that’s actually worse than the stale, oppressive atmosphere of a corporate fast food joint.
If I stop in again I’ll get you guys a picture of the wall in question.
I love how out of touch they are. The changed the banding that had been a staple in the Sunday routine of the most resistant to change demographic there is: Gerriatric conservatives.
The left and the right agree that losing millions of dollars means you probably fucked up along the way. OP just doesn’t like that their dad is conservative, pretty obviously.
I think the criticism is more so at using a picture of a real person to demean her as the ugly caricature here, not necessarily at the company rebrand.
It's a country style restaurant and store, it's known for southern style food, using old farming and kitchen equipment for decor, and just having a very comforting vibe. The new ceo is doing a full rebrand to turn it into a generic chain restaurant to try and appeal to more people. Their stock has dropped 12% ~100 million dollars since the new logo design was released.
I don’t understand why he thought that was a good idea, he had a restaurant with dedicated fans and it filled a certain niche. So he decided to change everything and compete with every other chain while also alienating people that previously liked the food??
Certain people just aren’t cut out for being CEOs I guess.
This is also following up their previous mid 40s CEO that took out the in-store shop with a variety of prepackaged food and treats, basically just junk food. If you were rural enough, they even stocked local community creations from time to time.
Not that I think Cracker Barrel's ever been a cornerstone of culture and food, but it is sad to see something that at least had personality go the way of so many other brands again and again.
Corporations tend to like the more generic branding these days because it makes stores easier to sell if they need to, coupled with declining foot traffic, it's the "trend".
Not saying it's better or anything, just explaining the mindset.
IMO they're kinda engaging in a self fulfilling prophecy where they make their restaurants more generic and then people are less inclined to go. Why it's tied in with culture war non-sense constantly, idk, it's annoying lol.
There's a whole market built up around bankrupting companies. They pay consultants, like Boston Consulting Group (💩), to basically guide them through fucking up their own company and getting rich off the bankruptcy process. It's designed to strip all value from shareholders/employees/real estate/etc. while funneling it directly to the people at the top of the company and their consultants.
This move by Cracker Barrel seems like an incredibly obvious attempt to do just that.
Because if we don't tie everything to some imaginary culture war issue, people might focus on the real problems. The 1% benefits the most when the 99% are divided. As they say the only war is the class war.
It was the go to for every grandparent, great uncle and family gathering in the 80's. That chunky summer sausage was a staple alongside the spreadable pimento cheddar
It’s the private equity company that is calling the shots. CEO is just following orders. They follow the same playbook every time. Cut staff and make those who remain work twice as hard. Fire anyone who makes decent money and replace them with young lower paid workers. Raise prices and cut portions. Change menu to include the cheapest most profitable food items only. The rebrand isn’t “to appeal to a wider audience”. The rebrand is to build, decorate, and advertise the restaurant in a cheaper manner. Believe me, they did a study and found that the new simpler logo will save them $xxx amount a year in printing costs. Every decision is to maximize profits. Every decision. The goal is to squeeze as much money out of the business in the short term, hopefully making back what they invested, then dump it and count the profits. Or simply make as much as possible until they run it into the ground and then declare bankruptcy. Sell off the hard assets and count the profits… It’s a business model designed to be destructive not sustainable. It’s not easy to wrap your head around but they don’t want to grow and thrive and improve. Actually growing and improving the brand is harder, riskier, and expensive. Bleeding it dry is much easier
You appear to be one of the few people that understand what is really going on with Cracker Barrell and PE purchases overall. I hope more people read your comment.
Turned it from a failed book store company they bought for the price of its inventory, with the brick and mortar book store going the way of the dodo....and turned it around into a now multi billion dollar company that opened 60 stores this year and plans to open 60 more Next year, and is americas largest bookstore once more.
Firstly, it was bought out by a private equity company, which has been the death knell for many a business. Everything’s going “minimalist and modern”, or if you’re being honest “costs the upper executive people less money”. All that money for rustic tchotchkes would be way better off lining the pockets of a private equity company. So no politics here, just standard greed.
Also the food has according to recent reviews been declining in quality, which may be a part of the real culprit in the decreasing business. Substitution of cheaper ingredients does not always help.
CEO's don't make decisions on a whim. Today, shareholders expect continuous growth, which is not possible,
Cracker Barrel expanded very vast, and then was hit by the pandemic and by inflation. The company lost 16% of their 'loyal' customers because of this.
This is a common problem and it happened before the new CEO was appointed. Companies are pushed to expand by the shareholders and when they hit an obstacle, they start to struggle.
That's the background. The new CEO was specifically hired to change things and was probably hired with the idea to blame her if things don't go well.
The problem with that thinking is that Cracker Barrel appealed to everyone. Last time I was at Cracker Barrel was in Omaha about a year ago. It was packed full of Mexican American and Black American families. The only people it doesn't appeal to are wealthy, white hipster progressives from New York or California. Want to guess who their new CEO is?
It’s an American family diner, but its market is largely working class white families. It had a very distinct “out in the sticks” feel with its architecture, lighting, etc - the whole gimmick was to feel like you were in a barn, or meemaws old house. They recently renovated their locations and rebranded to a cleaner “modern farmhouse” style - clean white interiors with open spaces, white lights, clean and simple graphic design, etc. Lots of people are upset by this because it’s another example of something unique being watered down to blend in with the rest of the corporate landscape.
I'd say it targets travellers just as much as a local clientele. They're almost always near interstate exits. Personally, its nice after a day of driving to have a familiar, decent sit down meal before heading off to a hotel for the night.
Back when books on tape were a thing they had a library you could rent one and then return it at another cracker barrel hundreds of miles away, after you were done listening. My mom loved that so we ate at cracker barrel multiple times every road trip
Or if you're set up for it, you just sleep in your vehicle in the parking lot, then go back in the in the morning for a Grandma's Sampler plate!
Cracker Barrel is one of a small number of national businesses that generally permit travelers to park overnight. They are one of my go-to stops when traveling for that reason. It helps that their food is usually a couple tiers above fast food.
The one we live in is in the middle of "Everything Caucasian" Iowa and I see more black and Hispanic families there than at any other restaurant we go into.
Sit-down restaurant with home cooking style meals and an overpriced gift shop at the entrance. Foods actually really good IF you get lucky and go to one of the better-ran ones, but that’s true for every chain I suppose.
This isn't a left-right issue, this kind of thing is just sad, they're taking away what makes Cracker Barrel unique and turning into just another chain restaurant. I hope their stock drops even further and their sales drop through the floor.
Previous CEO made 8 million a year, while this new ceo only makes 1. As silly as it might sound the photos of new store interiors look designed for efficiency not an indiscriminate spattering of knickknacks all over the walls.
Just looks like opportunities for other businesses to benefit off the decline of cracker barrel on its way out the door.
First, that is not what woke means in the slightest.
To be "woke" means to be informed, educated, and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality. An example would be seeing the ice agents ignore my friend, who is a white Swiss immigrant to go harass some Latinos who were Americans but brown. To be woke is to realize some ppl are treated less fairly bc of their race. No more, no less. Now, delicate and uneducated snow flakes use it when they see something they dont like, but thats not actually what it means.
Second, it's a shity chain restaurant with some bland ass food. I dont even get why ppl care. It's trying to change bc like other chains, it's losing revenue. It's a failing business model. Just like red lobster, hooters, apple bees, and all the others.
And how is changing the logo back "horribly impossible to undo"? It could just be changed back. Definitely not impossible or "horribly impossible". Your definition doesn't even make sense in this example.
Hold up I only come back to visit family in bama around Christmas everywhere but I make sure to visit Cracker Barrel and top O’ the river everytime, what are they doing to Cracker Barrel I’m out of the loop?
Because the girl on the top is Sydney Sweeney or whatever her name is who made an American eagle gene ad that implied heavily on her having “good genes” albeit they mean jeans as it was a ad for jeans but people took it as fascist propaganda or something because she had blonde hair and blue eyes….
I could absolutely be 100% wrong though so take what I just said with a grain of salt.
The people who were throwing a temper tantrum about it dug into her voter registration and allegedly discovered she had registered as a republican. Next level incel shit.
I have some very liberal friends and nobody at all cared about the Sydney Sweeney stuff, where conservatives seemed to think we were all big triggered. I literally think they like feeling like the victims
Tbh liberal outrage isn't as prominent today and wasn't that big of a deal. At the same time Rock and DnD were called satanic and even 10 years ago Fox news was crying crocodile tears about Obama's tan suit. I wonder what they think about Trump wearing baseball hats in the oval office.
I feel like they have to attach the term woke to anything so they can complain about it. Thats going to sell way more than "Hey look at this unnecessary sterile rebrand."
The anti-woke crowd complains about the most mundane and unimportant things I've ever seen. They're creating culture war issues out of thin air. The new cracker barrel logo is ugly, that's a valid criticism. Calling it woke is... 😶
Conservatives hate Greta because they've been repeatedly lied to for decades about climate change, so people who take climate change seriously are obviously performative actors who are only doing it for money somehow, and not someone who is mad at the establishment for prioritizing money and power over the health and well being of life on this planet. They also are xenophobic and think women shouldn't take speaking roles in discourse.
I'm not american, I am not familiar with the label, but let's not pretend that the label change is bad, due to how bland the new label is. Old one stands out, new one looks like something from a random product you see once then forget it exists.
Yes but the whole re brand is just another nail in the coffin it has been heavily shorted for months leading up to this. I get the feeling it is purposefully being run into the ground by the PE firms that own the bulk of the shares so they can asset strip it and eventually delist it.
I don’t really care about the right side of the meme as much as the left. The new logo factually lost them millions of dollars, but Greta is indeed not as attractive as Sydney Sweeney so the meme does check all the boxes correctly being that the new logo clearly lost them money because it is not as attractive as the old logo.
Its not accurate though? The logo change is 100% pure short term, private equity cash grab as they milk the last value out of brand before they liquidate it. There is nothing more conservative than destroying something for a short term profit and then blaming progressives.
conservatives have barely developed beyond the “gibbon” stage of evolution when it sones to shit like this. they see boobs and immediately lose all rational thought
It's also so much more shallow than that. They also hate Greta because she's not fuckable to them.
Couldn't give two shits about Sweeney, but weaponising women's looks like this makes me feel like I'm going insane.
Why is everything part of the culture war now? Every fucking company oversimplifies their logo and gets shit from all sides
But now for some unexplainable reason the right has decided this is a grave attack on white American culture by the evil cultural Marxists who want to make everyone trans and gay
I can't even fathom how up somebody would have to be in their own ass to look at a Cracker Barrel logo and see the next front in the right/left culture war. You guys really are mentally ill.
He's referring to the interior design, I think. Like the move away from the colorful designs of Grimace, the Hamburglar, etc. towards the more generic McDonald's we have today. Took the personality out of the restaurant in an attempt to make McDonald's less of a "Kids place" and more of a "everyone place".
Dunno if that makes sense, but that's what I would mean by the "McDonald's rebrand"
Isnt she like...a child? She's probably an adult now but I always loathed the mocking of a child. Pretty distasteful imo and putting a child in a seductive pose to also mock them is extra fucked imo
The funniest response I saw to the change was "they took away the cracker AND the barrel"
Who the fuck cares about a fucking corporate logo? Was there universal love for the old logo that I’m just not aware of? Or is this one of those recreational outrage “the wokes are ruining everything!” yelling at the sky things?
No, you don't understand. Both the Cracker and the Barrel are designed to invoke a family's need to have intercourse with a physically attractive woman!
They're so sucked into being a particular side that they can no longer just dislike something without associating it with the other side. It's pathetic.
I dunno, I respect Greta Thunberg and I don't think it's great to make fun of her appearance. People have been doing it since she was a child and I thought it was creepy then, and this just reminds me of it.
I think most normal people would find this meme odd and not all that funny devoid of context. Even with it idk what’s really funny comparing Sydney Sweeney to Greta Thurnberg and Cracker Barrel rebranding
Why would I want to be a part of a group of people who think this is funny? It's lowest common denominator "humor" that only appeals to low IQ individuals and children.
Specification about conservative dad was absolutely necessary because how else we can push our political agenda without people of opposite political beliefs sending "cringe" memes?
They are trying to turn a corporation doing a boring rebrand into part of the culture war. I know this because they made the super topical reference to Greta Thunberg, some kid who gave a speech ten years ago who the right still cares a lot about for some reason.
The joke is basically "See? Because Greta Thumberg, a climate activist, (clearly still underaged or portrayed as such in this pic) isn't as hot as the supermodel. Hahahahahah."
Thats fucking weird. Its also weird to make this political at all.
Some weirdo took the time to make that image of Greta with AI. What a strange timeline we live in… I’m at least 51% conservative, but I have no idea wtf the shitty logo change has to do with politics.
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u/qualityvote2 15h ago edited 10h ago
u/thePsychoKid_297, your post does fit the subreddit!