re: So were you leaving Cracker Barrel for?

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I’m not sure that I am as bent up on the Cracker Barrel logo change

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I'm not boycotting them or anything like that, I'll still eat there if I'm with family and they want to go. I'm a Waffle House man through and through though - I still remember the first time I went in high school and I've been hooked since.

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So were you leaving Cracker Barrel for?
Royalfishing

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there are plenty of fantastic southern cooking restaurants in Texas that are locally owned and offer better food than a chain. Hadn't been to Cracker Barrel in at least 5 years, and only because someone else wanted to go.

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The Bud Light and Cracker Barrel things are completely different.

Bud Light was the #1 shitty beer in America. The VP of marketing decided to make it gay to bring in more people. Backfired.

Cracker Barrel has been losing customers for years because their demo is old people and old people die. There are no new young people coming in to replace them. So they had to do something, anything, to try and get more younger customers. Even if the CEO is a woke idiot, and appears to be, this decision is strictly business. I don't think this is political at all.

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GTFO here with this reasonable take. It couldn't be the fact that people don't want their food choices. It's all about rainbows and stuff.

I'd guess every major chain has had to reinvent itself at some point, to some degree, to maintain profits and stock prices.

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Their stock is down 75% in 4 years. Their profits have been reduced by more than half YoY.

Everyone already stopped going. Let's not pretend there was a line out the door for the previous model.

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They absolutely needed to do something but they chose the wrong path. Should have focused on food/hospitality and doubled-down on the old southern charm

Dumb people to the walls at Cracker Barrel

Covid really did a number on CB. We'd go a couple times a year before then on road trips and whatnot. Since covid, we've gone much less, hardly at all anymore. Service has been awful. Slow and unattentive. Food has gone downhill as well. Every once in a while it is on point, but most of the time its clear things have been sitting out for a while (slow service isn't helping here) and just poorly prepared.

The new management has a part in that. They started changing the menu in 2022 ish iirc. While they have seemingly made the menu more limited, they've brought in a lot of varied things in what they do have, which i'm sure makes things more difficult on the kitchen staff. Instead of having a bunch of variants of the same basic thing, you now have a lot less cross-use.

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Are any chains thriving right now?

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I read something the other day about Texas Roadhouse and Chili's killing it these days.