Oh look, some profit loving, profit reliant "companies" existing only for profit have dropped "the woke liberal agenda", meaning what?
Who are they and are they abandoning their ROI mantra for wokeism?
Tell a story you dumb cunt.
Oh look, some profit loving, profit reliant "companies" existing only for profit have dropped "the woke liberal agenda", meaning what?
Who are they and are they abandoning their ROI mantra for wokeism?
Tell a story you dumb cunt.
"The founding fathers did not like the idea of the tyranny of the majority ruling the country"
Dan Druff
“I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Albert Einstein
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today if a gift
and that is why it's called the present"
Eleanor Roosevelt
As always, there's more to the story than the left/right narratives claim.
The rebranding idea dates back almost a year ago, when the CEO decided Cracker Barrel was struggling and needed a complete aesthetic overall. They began a $700 million refurbishment/rebrand, of which the sign was part of it.
One of their investors, a guy named Sardar Biglari, saw the fail coming from a mile away. He repeatedly stated that Cracker Barrel's issue wasn't its logo or interiors, and that changing it would do almost nothing to bring in more customers, but rather just waste money. He claimed that he had witnessed many other restaurants make the same mistake.
The CEO dismissed him and they went forward with it anyway.
Her wokeness was probably a peripheral part of this. In fact, this situation turned out to be incredibly similar to that of Bud Light. In both cases, the brand seemed to be in decline. In both cases, a woke white female felt she had the solution -- a rebrand which would appeal to a wider audience. In both cases, the woke woman in question had somewhat of a disdain for the current demographic using the product/service. In both cases, they gave a not-so-subtle middle finger to their current customer base, and the brand suffered a huge backlash.
Pretty good Twitter thread explains this whole thing, and it comes with receipts:
https://twitter.com/AsraNomani/status/1960407636446175597
That investor was 100% right, by the way.
I've seen this mistake time and time again.
Something is struggling and failing to retain the popularity it once had. Sometimes it's a restaurant, sometimes it's a website, sometimes it's a TV show, sometimes it's a car brand... it could be anything.
The powers in charge invent a reason in their head why it's failing, and then invent a solution, usually with no market research.
A major change is implemented, and it's assumed that it will breathe life into the failing product/service/show, as a change means people will look at it as something fresh and new, right?
Everyone hates the change. The loyalists to the brand are turned off by the changes, yet at the same time, it doesn't bring in anyone new, as rebrands do not significantly change longtime reputations.
This would be the equivalent of me upgrading PFA to vBulletin version 6 (the newest one), and rebranding this site as a poker strategy forum. Almost all of the existing users would leave, yet I'd hardly get anyone new, because PFA already has a reputation for what it is currently.
That's basically what Cracker Barrel did.
On the woke end, they were forging "LGBTQ+ community partnerships" and other unnecessary shit which was just likely to piss off the customer base, and otherwise derive little benefit. That's where the wokeness comes in, as the CEO felt that these hollow gestures would somehow bring in the Sloppy Joes and JimmyG_415s of the world, while not alienating the desertrunners.
You need to understand your brand and your appeal, and stay in that lane. And if you attempt to expand from that lane, do so VERY cautiously.
Why do they hire morons like this?
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1961213724653482205
A 93 year old still has enough common sense to understand their issues. There is huge variance from one Cracker Barrel to the next in terms of food quality. The ones off I20 here seem to still be mostly decent, while the ones off I44 in Missouri are just awful, for example, but overall everyone that had an opinion about Cracker Barrel prior to this controversy had the same opinion - the food has gotten dramatically worse over the last 15-20 years. I won't stop at one anymore. Most locations are barely above school lunch quality.
Surprised there's such variance, as usually that's the hallmark of a brand which is franchised, such as Denny's. There are no Cracker Barrel franchises.Originally Posted by VaughnP
The general decline in food is probably due to corporate cheaping out on ingredients and buying ones that are lower quality.
If this really is the consensus, then it's even dumber to have wasted $700m on redesigns and renovations, when that money could have been put into acquiring better quality food. I'm guessing they were afraid that buying more expensive ingredients would be an ongoing cost, whereas the renovations would be 1-time. Still, if people are leaving because your restaurant has been sucking, the only fix for that is to make the food better.
At first I didnt remember making this thread, but glad Druff split it from the other general topic. This topic needed to independent, good job Druff.
Is Kleenex on borrowed time for the conservative outrage mob?
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Sloppy Joe’s turn in the barrel.
POKER FAG ALERT! FOR BLOW JOBS SEE SLOPPY JOE, SONATINE AND BCR.
The constant grievance machine is weird to me also.
Is Kleenex on borrowed time for the conservative outrage mob?
Like google why are logos all becoming simplified? You will find a hundred articles over the last decade. I have probably been to Cracker Barrel maybe ten times, but I have driven by it thousands of times and never even noticed the old man in the logo. Hand to God. Never noticed. If you told me they changed the logo I would have had to ask what it was before as it is the same color. I am a bit of a tunnel vision guy though and not that observant.
But taking the old white guy off plays into the we are being replaced narrative, when we are being replaced because we all have so few kids compared to minorities that it is largely replacement by choice and corporations needing younger workers we aren't pumping out.
If Druff says the lady is liberal, ok, I believe him, but everyone has changed their logo, most going for the simplified look. The most common explanation I have seen for the simplified logos in all the instances that didn't become political is because of pixelation on devices and things of that nature. That simplified logos score higher in studies.
As someone who has worked at a company when I was young where the writing is on the wall, there are a million dumb ideas floated to save the company when reality is it can't be saved in the way it has existed for decades. When I worked at GM every new person had some idiotic idea that was never going to change the reality of they had poorly engineered and outdated vehicles and that they were going to have to be largely produced overseas to stay alive.
Cracker Barrel sucks, it caters to a rapidly aging demo of people in a world of doordash. It is unhealthy in a world that is more health conscious or else dying rapidly from type 2 diabetes. Clearly this didn't help and may have been tone deaf, but reality is reality. It is going down either way and there will be half the number there was a decade ago a decade from now. If that.
I think the removal of the guy and the barrel really was a woke thing, but more in the "Let's attract young liberals who might otherwise be turned off by this" way than "The white guy and the barrel are symbols of racism".
Conservatives found a lot of rhetoric on their website about LGBTQ+ partnerships and plenty of other shit which gives an indication regarding the direction the management wants to take the company.
It's not worth a massive outrage, but I also get why conservatives are annoyed with companies decided they're evolved past their loyal customer base.
Any woke commercial or ad is something I won’t ever buy again.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
There is no debate here, it was a total left wing liberal woke push. Why are you guys breaking ti down to some debate??
Then this happened...
Cracker Barrel quietly removes DEI and Pride pages from its website after logo upheaval
Cracker Barrel took down Pride page after rebrand fiasco
We ordered Cracker Barrel a month or so ago and it was terrible. A year ago it was good, large portions and it didn't taste microwaved, even if it probably was. Maybe they should work on that, instead of make-work logo changes from their failing up CEO.
And change back the peg game from its new wussified version.
Your report about the food is pretty much what I'm hearing from everyone.
There's an odd phenomenon in the business world -- and sometimes in the arts as well -- where a company will run from past success as if it's being chased.
If you did it before successfully, you can do it again. The only exceptions involve tech (evolves so quickly), fashion (same), or fads (again, same).
But what happens is that these companies get into a vicious cycle where they get complacent, their product/service degrades, competition swoops in and steals some of their customer base, and their response is, "Oh! We've gotta be more like them in order to compete!", and then they become a poor man's version of their competition. Myspace was a good example. They were huge, but eventually the site became slow, sloppy, difficult to navigate, and overrun with bots. Facebook then elevated because it was clean, easy to use, and had very few bots. Rather than fix their issues and bring back the site to its former glory, they first did nothing, and then eventually rebranded to be a knockoff Facebook. And that was that.
Cracker Barrel got cheap, perhaps because inflation was shrinking their profits, and they probably figured they could cut corners to get costs down. People like you noticed it sucked and didn't have a desire to go back. Instead of recognizing that 2024 Cracker Barrel tasted much worse than 2018 Cracker Barrel, they decided that what they really needed was a rebrand and renovatin.
Beyond stupid.
I think the problem here was that the CEO had nothing in common with the average customer, so she had no clue what was important to them. This can be overcome with good market research, but it seems they weren't interested in that. It seemed they were more interested in moving on and broadening their appeal, which often doesn't work if you're a longstanding brand.
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