will go out for a walk on some 6 story Moscow apartment building

But a lot of corporate logos are being redesigned to look good on a phone screen, so that means clean, basic, & simple.

The customer base skews heavily towards older people, mostly white and conservative who have been going there for a long time.

Why would they want fancy modern decorations making the place look like any new restaurant?

I bet the marketing team are 20 yr old gen z's who did not quite grasp that concept.

Wouldn't be the first time. Major League Baseball changed rules to cater to the young.

I know they added a clock on the pitcher, but that seems to cater to all ages.

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Us Gen X and older hate how it's automatic. Let's see 4 outside pitches again.

I was watching Texas play Cleveland yesterday and Texas's uniforms didn't even look like they were playing professional sports.

I love baseball and don't like the dumbing down. Also, the pitch clock doesn't seem to be working. Every game I have watched, they are now milking it down to every second. So overall an at bat can take longer.

I hate the automatic walk too. Sometimes they'd throw a wild pitch or occasionally someone would reach out and hit it!

The pitcher got a little too close.

It was so fun to watch him hit!

I'm waiting for the camera and AI to call the balls and strikes. Much like the line calls in many tennis tournaments.

Will the manager get ejected for kicking dirt on the lenses?

It was lowered after the 1968 season, but not again since then.

MLB enlarged the base size to make steals easier, limited pick-off throws to runners on base, limited mound visits per inning, limited defensive shifts, instituted the league-wide designated hitter rule, instituted a minimum number of batters a reliever must face, instituted the ghost runner for extra inning play.

Gen Z and Millennials, particularly, were complaining baseball moved too slowly. Some changes arguably were needed.

The real reason baseball games have been longer than in the past was the explosion of between innings commercials on TV. They have expanded from 60 seconds in the early seventies to 150 seconds. All those commercials added 17*1.5 minutes or nearly a half hour to the game.

But the TV stations need to be able to sell ads to pay for the contracts.

So the solution was not less commercials, it was a pitch clock because generations after the boomers don't want to watch a three hour game that doesn't flow like football with replays that something happens.

If after so many he doesn't get the runner out he walks the way I understand it.

It was vile. The vending machine was always out of regular old coke. So I drank diet rather than new

Wretched commercials and the taste never seemed like it was before. Try a bottle from Mexico, pretty good.

Coke cans and bottles have been changing since without fanfare.

People aren't boycotting coke because of the names on cans. I rarely drink coke and when I do, I tend to avoid ones with names (because it's not my name) obviously Coke is still doing it and it must not be hurting their sales. And I guess if the only bottle/can available was named "Brutus" or something, I would buy it.

The powers-that-be at Cracker Barrel made the gross error of assuming their patrons were functioning adults---people who wouldn't get riled up by the mere updating of a logo and some interior improvements, maybe some tweaking of the menu. It speaks volumes about MAGATs that such minor changes led to such catastrophic results. I mean, it's a fucking restaurant chain---not some place famous like the White House, where no sane person would ever dream of making things uglier and cheaper-looking...

I am not MAGA. I don't like changing long-time things. God help Folgers if they ever get rid of "The best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup!"

This is a rather sweeping statement rejecting all change or progress. Are you sure about this??

I was talking about certain logos and jingles (Folgers one).

When Kentucky Fried Chicken changed to KFC, I didn't like it, but it didn't stop me from eating there either.

In general, most consumers do not like new logos.

Land O Lakes is another example. The original was beautiful and was designed by a Native-American. But they got rid of it. Was it offensive? I do not think so. It so beautifully depicted the scenery and the Native-American was beautiful. In northern Wisconsin, the reservations still host pow-wows and to the best of my knowledge, most people don't find them offensive.

Aunt Jemima I could understand more, but I still don't agree with the name change. Eskimo Pie's was another. It's all because of 2020. After the protests, a lot of companies/teams changed names and logos. Today, there is much less pressure to change things like that.

Some Alaska Native groups still use it, however. I wonder what percentage was actually offended by Eskimo. It had to be no more than 0.001%. By changing the name, they probably offended 20%.

'Eskimo' was complained about long before 2020.

Waffles are great and believe or not so are the hamburgers. I used to sell cash registers and I would have sold the entire chain if my cash register automatically printed the receipt. I lost the entire sale because of that feature.

is older and dying off. Gotta make room for the next generation.

would make a great slogan!

Whether it is an immigrant speaking what is to them an unfamiliar language or a change to the logo of an old restaurant.

The mere fact that things aren't just like they were 50, 60, 70 years ago is enough to give them a panic attack.

Some marketing 'genius' right out of college decides he knows better than the millions of people that have patronized the company for 50 years.

my guess.

and Wall Street concluded the people running that company don't have a clue how to move this business forward. The stock price drop was actually insignificant, with the shares still up 25% over the past 12 months.

The issue is that revenues have remained flat in recent years, but the profits are dropping sharply every year, leaving them with a very high PE of 21. McD has a PE only slightly higher and they have small but steady growth in revenues and profits.

My guess is that management has been telling Wall Street they were going to modernize their whole image, menu, decor, the whole thing. Remember when JC Penney hired the clown from Apple who tried to turn their stores into a version of the Genius Bar. That pretty much put JCP out of business.

Wall Street was looking for a plan to freshen the whole Cracker Barrel experience and image, and what they got was a new logo that could have been drawn by a 3rd-grader. I'm surprised the stock didn't drop 50%

bigger disaster than JCPennys..........Remember the New SEARS CEO years ago that decided to get out of the mail order catalog business, and put all fancier, higher priced fashion stuff in their stores????????????

(Sears with their extensive mail order business would have been in the perfect place to start up an internet business like Amazon,, with very little work..............Also how sad that Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools have been sold off and grossly cheapened......)

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And as I recall, it had a lot of the characteristics of the early Amazon ecosystem, including allowing independent merchants to sell on the platform. But whenever I looked, the prices were basically MSRP -- way above the normal selling price. It was insane. They surely spent millions setting that up, but missed the most basic principle -- price competitiveness.

The site still exists, ironically selling Craftsman tools and many other things. That is owned by "Transformco" that bought up the remaining Sears assets in bankruptcy. Stanley Black & Decker owns the Craftsman brand. Sears never really made much product at all. They were strictly a retailer and broker.

Wilson Forge? made most of the Craftsman hand tools like wrenches, etc. But the quality control by Sears was extremely good. Now who ever is making them is cutting corners and turning out poor quality tools. Probably same with all their power hand tools and bigger power tools.

It seems it was taken over by some corporate "Raider" ass hole, tearing sears apart and selling off the pieces and profiting handsomely......

I was, a long time ago, a top corporate executive in the North American Retailing field. I watched as in one fell swoop, the new Sears CEO went off on an ego tripping tangent.
In my opinion, he did TWO things that were almost immediately the kiss of death. Number one, shutting down the massive catalog business and it's profit center they had, and Number two, abandoning all their long time customer base, by completely replacing the entire clothing line that the customers had always bought and were still buying, and installing across the board a much higher "fashion" line, which was completely foreign to their existing customer base, especially in Rural America.

It has always amazed me the absolute stupidity of many individuals at the top levels of Corporate Management, who surround themselves with equally stupid "YES" people in their upper management who won't be a threat to them. (Sound familiar to our executive branch?????)

Years ago, I watched a newly installed CEO at United? Airlines. He was intent on exerting his EGO by making HIS mark on the company extremely visual. For starters, he designed a whole new color scheme for the exterior of United Airliners.......I don't think most people have any idea of what is involved in replacing the current paint job on just ONE airliner and the extreme cost. Let alone the entire world wide fleet.......Then every vehicle having the new logo and same paint job........Then the new colors and logos on ALL of the forms, stationary, tickets, ticket counters, gate counters and areas, etc etc etc........Not only the associated costs, but in addition the logistics of doing it are mind boggling.........
A senior United Captain, who had 36,000 hours with United described the process and costs to me of the time needed and the stripping the paint off just one Stretch DC8-61 or one of the new 747's.......and then re-doing the primer, and then applying the new paint job. He also described the AMOUNT OF WEIGHT that was added to a plane by just the paint job. LOL he stated that the smartest airline was American, because they didn't paint their entire plane, only painted on the logos. He said that due to that, the American planes could carry thousands of more pounds of freight and/or passengers for additional profits that the other airliners that painted their entire planes were missing out on.....

Yes, the paint is a huge issue -- very heavy.

It is not just Sears and United, of course. It is the parade of Harvard MBAs that have done enormous damage to this country and its competitiveness. In the earlier part of the industrial revolution, most companies were led by people who had worked their way up through the company. Now that seems to be the exception, and if a company is not completely controlled by vulture capitalists that know nothing about the business, it is likely that the executive offices are dominated by people whose main skills are financial trickery and stock manipulation.

The irony with Sears is that they were in the "Internet model" 100 years before there was an Internet. Replace "catalog" with "website" and you basically have Amazon 100 years earlier. In the days when the majority of the population was rural, most of Sears' sales were mail order. If there ever was a company that was set up to make the transition to the Internet, it should have been Sears.

Am I thinking of the same guy?

Corporate marketing doesn't consult with nor give Wall Street advance alert on logo redesign. I've never heard of such a thing in 46 years of advertising.

The logo was likely redone to work better on social media and appeal to a younger audience. I'm not defending the redesign. I agree it looks like not a lot of thought went into it either.

Have you ever attended a corporate annual shareholder meeting, especially with a struggling company?

In CB's 2014 meeting they made these promises about a "strategic transformation:"

that caused the drop. its stupid but the stock only dropped back to where it was in june

New Coke

I also saw an interview with their marketing head and ummmmmmmm.

My 15yo could do better.

Methinks they would be better served figuring out American Comfort foods of quality at affordable price point with a side of nostalgia.

Also, throw in reasonable wages and employee ownership plan.

then they can sell all the barrels for cash after piling on a ton of debt.

So the hell what? There are more important things to be worried about than a logo. You know, just for the heck of it, I googled "Cracker Barrel" and "Fox". Guess what? The clickbait network has done multiple stories about this to certainly rile up their idiot viewers. I'll bet this is one of their biggest stories of the week. (Juliet Jeske at Decoding Fox News keeps track of this kind of stuff. Great podcast, by the way.)

The name and logo changes for Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's also created outrage among right-wingers, the changes were viewed as "virtue signaling," "cancel culture" and "erasing tradition and history."

Aunt Jemima's parent company, Quaker Oats (a subsidiary of PepsiCo), "announced in June 2020 that it would retire the 130-year-old brand. The Aunt Jemima image was based on a 19th-century minstrel show caricature that evoked nostalgia for slavery."

"Acknowledging that the logo evoked images of servitude, the owner of Uncle Ben's, Mars Inc., announced its rebrand in September 2020. The white-haired Black man in the logo, a Chicago chef and waiter named Frank Brown, was sometimes depicted with a bow tie. In Southern states, 'uncle' was used as a deferential honorific for older Black men in place of 'Mr.' to avoid showing respect."

"Conservative outlets and commentators expressed frustration and anger over the changes, echoing broader 'culture war' sentiments, critics accused the brands of bowing to 'woke' or 'cancel culture' pressures, which they viewed as a threat to American heritage and established traditions...Some customers and critics felt the companies were needlessly abandoning recognizable and beloved brand identities. This perspective viewed the iconic characters as harmless or even positive and questioned the need for change."

Worth looking up that story.

Haven't been back, haven't missed it in 12 years now

Haven’t been to one in many years, and that was because I needed a restroom while traveling

We always stopped a Cracker Barrel when traveling 4 things I like from there their greens, their chicken fried steak, their buckeyes candies and the retro clove gum and clove sugar swizzle stix .

They can keep the horehound flavored shit.

It was after the faux outrage from the maga crowd.

A company is trying to rebrand itself to attract younger people and maga gets upset. Snowflakes.

Now if they changed the food, or the prices, I could understand "upset". Because that actually means something. But the shape drawn on the outside of the building, or at the top of the menu? People need a sense of proportion.

A logo is designed to attract new customers - who want a way to evaluate a product before spending money on it. Existing customers have an idea of what they pay for - and, realistically, they are not paying for "sitting there with a picture of a geezer next to a barrel".

I wouldn't boycott, but I think changing a longtime logo was bad idea, and I don't like the new one. It's not really minor either. They made a major change.

I still hate it that Instagram, Amazon, and Land O'Lakes changed their logos, and how Eskimo Pie's and Aunt Jemima changed their names entirely. I understand people who don't care (my dad had a "small things don't bother me" attitude), but they have to understand the people that do. Maybe it's a personality trait.

The thing is, it's their logo, not yours. I can't understand how someone can be so invested in so many companies' logos.

The change was in 2021. The disgusting change to the one on the right still bothers me. I agree that it's their choice though.

Well ain’t that just too bad.

I’ll never set foot in their restaurants… unless someone dared me to go with purple hair, dressed in drag.

With a bunch of my punk goth friends
We actually had compliments sincere ones and had a great time. Got my clove gum and clove sugar swizzle stix

It seems that whenever a company suddenly realizes that their customers are getting older, they panic and decide to change it all around to appeal to younger customers.

Number one - it's a slap in the face to the older customers who are giving you most of your business.
Number two - it's NEVER a given that the younger generation will like your product or your service.
You can hope they will ... eventually. But it takes time to develop that business.
In the meantime, stockholders start to bail because it looks like you don't know what you're doing. It's always a crap shoot.

it is generic and sterile. it seems like a lot of companies are moving towards sterile and minimalist logos - but those are so boring and have no character.

So sick of it.
Sick of cars being named the ixe49a
What happened to names like firebird and mustang corvette and corolla?
Companies have gotten so uncreative and boring and disgustingly minimalist.

Firebirds, Mustangs, Corvettes and Corollas, the cars?

All the cars look alike now and have for a while, plus they're boring colors. There's no individuality, no style...but lots of over priced features that relieve the driver of burdensome driving skills.

I hate those stupid commercials where a woman in headphones and another older woman pushing a baby carriage walk out into the road where a car nearly hits them. Good thing the cars told the drivers to stop!

Never mind stupid pedestrians.

Sorry about the rant.

It's generic and sterile all right. Also bland and boring. I can't imagine why anyone thought that was a good idea. It shows no imagination whatsoever.

It's lIke they said, "Welp, the old guy and the barrel are too old-fashioned, gotta update it to look more modern!" So they took those out, but then they didn't add anything new. Just those 2 words floating in a bunch of blank space. *YAWN*

Actually, it doesn't. But, if I can piss off one Magat, it's a good day.

Love it!

Went to Austin Texas for a wedding. The hotel told us to eat there. Barf. We ordered the only two things that weren't deep fried. And even they were disgusting.

JFC


Maybe a white sheet over a traffic cone would better fit the clientele?

A MAGA idiot, that' who.

In April, their stock price was ant $36 and now it’s at $54. So while they lost some value from its strange acceleration and high of $72 in late June (in Jan. Is was at $64) it is way down from 5years ago. They need a to widen their audience (and alter their heart attack inducing menu).

I smell market manipulation this year more than feigned outrage over a logo…that still has ugly colors.

I had a photo showing my point but can’t figure out how to post. But look at any stock site and then hit the “6 months” to show the real stock trajectory.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/CBRL:NASDAQ?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr5oeh35-PAxXNI0QIHTapJoUQ3ecFegQIFhAY&window=6M

White guys in white hoods on horseback.

The new one is clean and streamlined, and prevents the company from being pigeonholed.

But who really cares? They make a really good breakfast.

For their POS systems. I was at HQ many times. Very nice people. It was a place that give people an escape. It means a lot to people. There was a local chain in Atlanta named “Po Folks”. They modernized and lost their customer base.

Feels like everyone in the whole country is spoiling for a fight. Anything will do until we can get our hooks into whomever or whatever we're pissed at. American is a target rich environment curently.

I ever tasted was on St Patrick's day at a Cracker Barrel in Lakeville, MN. It was quite a hike from downtown Minneapolis where I lived at the time, but I used to go there about once a month for a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Being black and considering the decor and the atmosphere (I considered it it 20th Century Confederacy), I was always apprehensive about going in there, but they treated me OK and the food was good. Haven't been to A Cracker Barrel now for at least a good 15 years. I've gotten older and I won't drive that far for a novelty meal anymore.

When the next earning reports come out they will be fine. This is stock traders panicking about nothing.

I pulled up CBRL in Etrade today and discovered I had 300 shares I bought back in June, 2020. I dont remember specifically buying it, but I was trading lots during the early days of lockdowns. I guess I thought CB was a bargain at the time. I paid $129.62. Today, it closed at $54.40. :-/ On the bright side, I have some loss if I decide to sell and can offset some capital gains.

But, I went to the CB website to review the executive bios. I couldnt believe that every exec I looked at (CEO, CMO, COO, CFO) was relatively new (

they think a logo change and remodeling their restaurants to resemble a Hampton Inn breakfast room will bring in younger customers despite decreasing food quality, customers that don't even have CB on their radar

Apparently there is a concern that the new logo is too "woke." But it's not, it's just standard corporate marketing mediocrity. Bring back the cracker and his barrel, calm these people down!

Carnivore heads exploded over that, as if it was being forced on them. Now the company has unveiled a bland and non-descript logo, reminding us that stupidity, just like imitation sausage, is not necessarily impossible. By the way, I have to admit that the faux-sausage is not half bad!

They had a good run. I think it was a totally foolish decision. They could have removed the old gent and left everything else and I would never have noticed the difference. Guess I'm just not that into subliminals. Have a great picture of my family sitting in those white rocking chairs out front as we waited to get in.

I was worried we were running out of non-issues to run in circles over..

Of course it’s not at all exclusively a right issue. I did kinda agree with Catherine Liu in Unherd (which is the type of conservative magazine that pretends to be independent, but they occasionally have an interesting piece).
I have seen similar critiques by other people like Musa Al Gharbi and well I don’t disagree except that it often seems that after all the critiques of their colleagues Al Gharbi etc move on with perfunctory references to the “working class” but not much more interest. It’s odd our images of groups that are reduced to mechanically used cliches.

But anyway what did interest me as a formerly instinctively alarmed about being seen as conspiratorial lameo, now cautiously considering the least conspiratorial stuff outside the strictly “banality of evil” worldview, but sans the prejudices those go with those, was this part (that sentence is an abomination but oh well..):

What good is a cracker barrel without the cracker?

at least up north grits, greens, fried okra and catfish. I am 77 and white and I see many customers that are not old and white
and they seem to like the food. The biggest complaint I ever hear about Cracker Barrel is it is noisy due to the decor. They need carpet and
some sound absorbing martials on walls and ceiling. I could have made that logo with an eraser, to think people actually get paid for that. LOL
Some people here criticize because of their political views, if it was a company owned by a Democratic supporter it would a favorite.

It's a tough old world when someone reimagines the immaginary.

Meritless and meaningless come to mind

The new logo is cheaper to print. The money saved on printing costs goes straight into the ceo's pockets.
I kinda like the new logo. Still think their food is meh, and won't eat there if I have a choice.

The share holders sold knowing there would be a knee-jerk negative reaction. They'll buy back later.

That's why Newsom memes are likely working.

We had one in our town years ago and they left. If they came back I would support them just for this.

To me, we have lots bigger fish to fry. No pun intended.

period.

and while teh stock lost 100m in market cap it only fell back to where it was just 2 months ago

trying to market to a younger demographic not yet interested in your type of environment.