UPenn’s Wharton School Marketing Prof. Americus Reed gets credit for the headline, a remark summarizing the pile of dookie that Cracker Barrel stepped in with its disastrous rebrand then reversal fiasco. A redistribution of wealth away from Cracker Barrel stockholders, who only have themselves to blame. Unless, of course, the board and the CEO hid their identity politics intentions and engaged in a massive cultural bait-and-switch.”We love Cracker Barrel, they said, but we’d love it more if the company came out of the closet in support of people who are not heterosexual, because that will help us sell more comfort food.”
Oh, and don’t forget diversity and belonging (Orwellian code for openly discriminating against white people).
In other words, let’s make our customer base as uncomfortable as we can, take away all the things they like about our food and restaurants, and watch the money roll in.
If he could, Uncle Herschel would have jumped up and started swinging that cane rocker at some folks, which might be why they took him off the sign, at least for a hot minute until the customer base, with the help of the new media, started marching on headquarters armed with the digital equivalent of sharpened barrel staves.
For the last 50 years, Herschel McCartney has been represented by the iconic man on a cane chair, arm resting on a cracker barrel — before he, the chair, and the barrel were unceremoniously removed from the familiar logo above all the CB entrances, as part of Masino’s ill-informed inside-and-out rebrand.
Cracker Barrel’s stock, already deep underwater at $60 after it peaked a few years ago at $170, dropped again after the rebrand fiasco. Despite the restoration of the logo, which appears to be just a stopgap measure by Masino, the stock has not recovered.
Was Masino just another victim of woke corporate culture from a class of business majors grown in the poisoned earth of diversity politics?
Masino got her degree in communications from Miami University and was with Taco Bell for five and a half years (three and a half as its international president). I don’t recall Taco Bell getting woke but I might have missed it.
Masino has also served on several other boards of directors and has been with Cracker Barrel since August 2023, and has been the CEO and President since November 2023.
Hamish: William, there’s riders approaching. Personal escort of the princess. You must have made an impression.
William: Aye.
Hamish: I didn’t think you were in the tent that long.
Cracker Barrel has been experiencing a decline in its stock price since the pandemic. When Masin was brought in it had lost 110.00/ per share in value from an April 2021 price of 175.09 per share.
After Masin took over the big chair, the stock rose from 68.00 to 82.00/share, and it’s been a rocky downhill road ever since. It opened Thursday at 54.07, and while that’s a fraction of its Pre-Pandemic peak, one thing we can say about Masino’s massive rebrand fail. Everyone knows the name Craker barrel, and the “publicity” has prompted a digital cleaning of the operations web space.
Masino had CB quietly wipe and scrub the DEI and so-called “Pride” references from its official company website.
Quietly, that is, until the gender/woke/DEI crowd noticed, triggering mental decompensation similar to Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Previously, there was a page dedicated to that crowd, noting: “On behalf of Cracker Barrel’s LGBTQ+ Alliance & DEIB Team, we want to celebrate YOU for being YOU. It is our greatest Mission to ensure that Pleasing People means ‘all people.’” Isn’t that special!
That page now redirects to CB’s “Culture and Belonging” page, a watered-down fluff page that makes no mention of “LGBTQ+” or “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion.”
Another now “deep-sixed” page focused on DEI noted: “We are increasing our focus on leadership development and mentorship programs to better identify, recruit, and advance strong, racially and ethnically diverse talent.”
Gone.
But is it gone from the dark halls of Cracker Barrel’s woke corporate culture?
When the University of New Hampshire was exposed for its biased Free Language Guide, it performed a knee-jerk front-end scrubbing of its website. It made public murmurings about honoring free speech, but you could still find PDFs and other garbage behind the Potemkin illusion. And at no point did the Unviserity system purge the admininstrative infrastructure that sustained the culture.
When Trump arrived and made a show of ending DEI at schools that received public money, most pretended, tried to relocate or rename the assets to protect the stormtroopers who defended the identity politic sculpture.
If Cracker Barrel is pretending, people will find out, and they are already in a barrel of hot water with their customer base. If they want them back, they’ll need to clean house, and if that means finding a new CEO, then they’d best get on with it.
