Cracker Barrel: Another failed narrative
Jim Thompson
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
Since July 21, Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores has seen their stock go from $71.93 per share to $50.27. I’ll do the math for you: that’s a loss of 30%.
Julie Felsss Masino is president and CEO of Cracker Barrel and a 1993 graduate of Miami University (our Miami University-Oxford, Ohio).
She has held this position since November of 2023 according to her LinkedIn profile. This week, social media has widely blamed Masino for changing the décor and logo of Cracker Barrel. If she is in charge of this move, I think it is a dangerous one.
I have no idea if the company did any customer surveys or used any other analytical tools to determine the ambiance and logo of Cracker Barrel in the future but based on the outrage I have seen in my corner of the world, they are making a mistake.
It is a mistake on the level of the one Bud Light made a few years ago.
It is dangerous to think that the way you see the world is the way it is seen by a majority of the world. I remember the quote in 1972 of the socialite in Manhattan who said she didn’t know anyone who voted for Richard Nixon. Nixon won 49 of 50 states, losing only Massachusetts. Obviously she lived in a cocoon.
So, there is a lesson here for all of us. The way we see the world is not necessarily the way the majority sees the world. I am not saying we should change, but we should at least be aware of our surroundings.
Sometimes it works the other way and is just as bad. That little old soap company in Cincinnati had a logo of which they were very proud. It dated back to nearly the founding of the company in 1839. I have a replica of it hanging on my office wall. It is the man in the moon and 13 stars. There is a great historical story that goes with it.
In the late 1970s, early 1980s, there became a fierce rumor circulating that this logo had something to do with the Reverend Moon church. Likely, you have never even heard of that. The soap company fought this rumor hard but couldn’t make it die. They finally gave up and changed their logo to the one they use now, which is something of a stylized moon with the initials of their company name within it.
The soap company’s new logo has the blandness of the new Cracker Barrel logo.
Finishing up with a surprising twist, people’s reputations are like logos. You should protect yours and never denigrate another’s. Many a person has been mentally destroyed by reputation rumors. The Country & Western music genre has made a lot of money singing about this.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
Comment
new name of or logo of cracker barrel
why go from good to worse, I know not?
Arches and freckles
Can one imagine McDonalds' dropping the Golden Arches monstrosity of a sign and symbol? (That is the greatest restaurant marketing trademark of all-time.) Or how about Wendy's swapping out the red-headed girl with pigtails with a 29-year-old biological male grad student with a man bun, a token Palestinian keffiyeh, and a skateboard??? And... What kind of name is Felss? Three consonants in a row and there's the possibility of a dreaded hyphen that could be linked to the last name. Like Rodham-Clinton... That's 2 red flags for me. I have an idea. If we use the left's tactics against them, we can call Felss Masino out for being a Miami REDSKIN! How insensitive...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.
Against stupidity we are defenseless.
Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessional Church in Germany and was hanged to death on April 9, 1945 by Hitler’s Nazis.