Devoted Cracker Barrel customers are “heartbroken” over the Southern chain ditching its country charm for a more sterile modern makeover in its bid to remain relevant.
The Tennessee-based company, known as much for its tchochkes as its Southern fixins’ like chicken fried steak and grits, has tossed the kitsch that drew generations of diners in favor of booths and crisp white walls.
“It has always felt like being in someone’s home,” said longtime diner Sharon Triana, who grew up visiting Cracker Barrel Old Country Store with her parents and now dines there twice a month with her partner and 10-year-old twins.
“But opening the walls, lighter colors and atmosphere, it feels like something colder,” Triana told the Wall Street Journal.
Cracker Barrel – which faced blowback in the past when it swapped out some wooden rocking chairs with rainbow ones to celebrate Pride – announced plans to remodel restaurants last summer after CEO Julie Felss Masino admitted the chain is “just not as relevant” as it used to be.
About 40 of the chain’s roughly 660 locations have completed some kind of remodeling as of early May, according to the Journal.
Cracker Barrel did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Rachel Love, who shared her grief over the changes in a series of TikTok videos that went viral, tried to convince herself that her nearest Cracker Barrel was receiving just a light spruce up when she noticed white paint covering the exterior.
“I thought, well maybe it’s primer,” Love told the Journal.
But when she visited the restaurant on Easter Sunday, she realized the white paint was permanent, and saw fewer antiques hanging on the walls and new Adirondacks replacing rocking chairs that had long sat on the porch.
“It was just heartbreak,” Love said. “My 14-year-old son was devastated.”
Felss Masino, who took over the chain in July 2023, argued that the negative reactions are examples of the nostalgia diners have for Cracker Barrel.
“It’s because people have an emotional connection with the brand,” she said during the Journal’s Global Food Forum earlier this month.
“People’s immediate reaction to things is like, ‘Oh this isn’t the way it was,’” but they tend to come around, she added.
Fans who will miss the old-timey feel of the chain are trying to get their hands on its iconic decor.
Many have hypothesized that the knick-knacks are being sent to a warehouse at Cracker Barrel’s headquarters in Lebanon, Tenn.
Cracker Barrel said much of the decor is being reused, and the rest is being sold to a third party.
There are some, however, who are excited about the renovations, like D.T., an employee at a Cracker Barrel in North Carolina who asked to go by her initials to protect her job.
“I honestly was blown away” by the new look, she told the Journal.
The upgraded lighting makes it easier for customers to read the menu, simpler decor makes for easier cleaning and the new floor plan creates a better flow between the restaurant and retail store portions of Cracker Barrel locations, D.T. said.
“Any restaurant that likes to base itself on a specific time period, it’s going to have to go through that sort of identity crisis,” D.T. told the Journal.
“But I think it might be overblown. It’s not like Cracker Barrel is trying to roll in with TVs.”
Julie Bidtah, a Colorado resident who often makes pit stops at Cracker Barrel restaurants during road trips, said she likes the new look, as the restaurants previously had a “cluttered,” “dark” and “dusty” look.
But she admitted the chain shouldn’t go too far with the renovation process.
“Your name is Cracker Barrel, so you’re kind of stuck with the whole nostalgia thing,” she told the Journal.
