Cracker Barrel recently unveiled a simplified logo that tried to split the difference between modernization and tradition: they kept the old timey font (no blanding) but lost the fiddly art of an old guy. After thinking about it for a while, Conservatives reacted with strategic fury, calling the new design "woke." Cracker Barrel, desperate to renovate after years of decline, tried to wait it out, but once President Trump gave them marching orders (apparently backed by a phone call from Deputy White House Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich to executives) it felt obliged to back down.
"Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before," Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. Mr. Trump followed up Tuesday evening by praising the company for returning to the old logo, writing that "all of your fans very much appreciate it."
Budowich spoke for the Tennessee-based company, which has 650 restaurants across the nation: "They thanked President Trump for weighing in on the issue of their iconic "original" logo. They wanted the President to know that they heard him, along with customer response (the ultimate poll), and would be restoring the "Old Timer.""
Welcome, Cracker Barrel, to the menagerie of dying brands kept caged by people who don't spend money there!
The underlying complaint concerns products and brands replacing their distinctive qualities with bland corporate defaults in hopes of appealing to new customers. Food, once cooked on site, is now reheated frozen slop trucked in by the finest logistics partners. Calling that "woke" is the right commandeering old left-wing complaints about neoliberalism, financialization and enshittification. The good news is elite media finally sympathizing with these positions in its editorial choices, the bad news is that it's only because they've been appropriated by the right.
Previously: Dead Lobster: seafood chain sinking into bankruptcy
