This week, American chain restaurant Cracker Barrel unveiled a new, streamlined logo, and the internet is in a free fall. The chain, a Southern-themed restaurant found off highways across the country, has become the latest battleground in an increasingly unpredictable culture war over American identity — and who gets to define it.
The previous logo, introduced in 1977, featured the outline of an older gentleman wearing overalls, sitting in a chair and leaning his elbow on the eponymous barrel. The new logo strips away ornamentation, leaving only the restaurant’s name in dark type inside a vaguely barrel-shaped blob.
While some on the left seem to be criticizing the aesthetic change, many MAGA enthusiasts and armchair pundits on the far right have read far more into the change.
I’ve been to a Cracker Barrel just once, while on a road trip with a friend from northern New Jersey to Austin, Texas, when we stopped at a location just off the highway somewhere in northern Florida. The brand, honestly, means very little to me, but I appreciate that it had a personality and a logo that was creative enough to be loved or hated.
In the wake of the new logo reveal, it seems there is bipartisan and widespread outrage over the rebrand. While some on the left seem to be criticizing the aesthetic change, many MAGA enthusiasts and armchair pundits on the far right have read far more into the change. They are not lamenting a design failure; rather, they’ve cast Cracker Barrel’s rebrand as a capitulation to woke liberalism, an erasure of the so-called American ideology that Cracker Barrel apparently represents.
Over the past few years, many brands, regardless of industry, have embraced the minimalist block-letter look popularized by Silicon Valley startups in the early 2000s. From luxury fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent to coffee and doughnut chain Dunkin’ to financial services company Mastercard, this strip-down has been everywhere for the past few years. Allegedly, the reason for the prominence of boring and soulless block type is that it simply looks more legible when shrunk down to fit on your phone’s home screen.
Founded in 1969, Cracker Barrel embodies a very specific story of American capitalist success, one tied to postwar growth. If you haven’t been to a Cracker Barrel ever, or recently, it is something of a faux general store. The food is Southern-style and affordable. Interestingly, the knickknacks that famously adorn its walls are genuine antiques. Not to be mistaken with nostalgia for the early 2000s and 2010s that is currently proliferating across American culture, Cracker Barrel’s entire ethos is early-1900s nostalgia, steeped in Southern Americana. It is a relic of a bygone era in both origin story and brand aesthetic.
That Southern brand identity is at the root of the outrage. The claim being that the rebrand is the latest nail in the coffin burying American tradition. One conservative consultant lamented on X, “We can’t stand for this! Return to tradition!” Another conservative activist posted, “It’s not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’”
This is not the first time Cracker Barrel has been the subject of far-right ire over the past few years. In 2022, almost three years ago to the day, the chain sparked outrage after adding a breakfast sandwich with plant-based sausage to its morning menu. One user reacted to the company’s announcement on Facebook, writing, “I just lost respect for a once great Tennessee company.” Then in June the following year, Cracker Barrel incensed half the internet again after posting in support of Pride month and debuting rainbow-colored rocking chairs. Then, Cracker Barrel was derided for “falling” to the “woke mob.”
The far-right outrage over this logo rebrand feels ironic, when, just weeks ago, the same voices now incensed about a new logo derided far-left criticism of an advertisement that was, in my opinion, far more provocative. My column on the now-infamous Sydney Sweeney advertisement garnered days of rude and pointed emails and social media posts asserting that I was digging up an issue and making an ideological leap where there wasn’t one to be made.
One person emailed me, including their full legal name and telephone number, in response to what I had written and said, “Why can’t anything be superficial and frivolous? Like simple math. … Stop reading so deep into it.”
I have to say I agree. Sometimes a rebrand really is just a rebrand.