Cracker Barrel's Board Should Fire Its CEO Immediately

How do you become CEO of Cracker Barrel without understanding your demographic?

Cracker Barrel is learning the same lesson Bud Light did: fat, bearded, gun toting middle Americans not only dislike change — especially the “woke” kind — but will also turn on you for taking a staple brand they love and pile-driving it into the ground.

Today Cracker Barrel’s stock cratered more than 10% after the company unveiled a rebrand that scrapped its iconic barrel-and-man logo in favor of a sterile, text-only “woker” design minus the old white guy and the…well, cracker barrel.

The move, pushed by CEO Julie Felss Masino, has triggered furious backlash from customers, conservatives, and investors alike, with many calling it the chain’s “Bud Light moment. And me, just calling it grossly fucking incompetent.

I mean, honestly. How do you become goddamn CEO of Cracker Barrel without understanding that this is your demographic? If you asked me to find me a woke Democrat in this crowd, I couldn’t. If you asked me to find someone who does their own plumbing or shot a deer before 6AM the day this photo was taken, I could simply point to anyone — including the women.

How does the company’s CEO just not walk into one of their own restaurants and open their eyes? How does she not understand that nobody has ever said, “Let’s pull off at Exit 49 for a plate of woke minimalism.”

People go for biscuits the size of baseball mitts, kitschy décor that hasn’t changed since Nixon, and that faint smell of maple syrup soaked into the walls. Instead, the CEO has singlehandedly torched decades of brand identity with a text-only logo that looks like it was spit out by a bored intern with Microsoft Word.

The backlash has been ferocious. Meanwhile, CEO Julie Felss Masino is insisting the feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive,” which is corporate-speak for “I muted my notifications yesterday morning and set my e-mail to my ‘out of office’ reply".

This is the executive leading a $700 million “modernization” push to swap cozy country stores for sterile farmhouse chic. In other words, the woman who thought you could make Cracker Barrel better by making it look less like Cracker Barrel.

Masino’s vision is essentially to strip away the hokey charm and replace it with something she clearly believes will appeal to “younger, more diverse diners.” The menu is being tinkered with too—lighter options, healthier twists, a nod to “evolving tastes.”

But here’s the obvious question: did she learn nothing from Bud Light? After watching the number-one beer in America self-immolate by alienating its core base, Masino still thought bulldozing nostalgia in favor of bland “relevance” was a stroke of genius?

That’s not bold leadership—that’s corporate malpractice.

Forget about not having a case study back at Harvard Business School to remember. Bud Light walked this exact plank literally just 2 years ago when it decided to suddenly pivot into a progressive rebrand via Dylan Mulvaney.

The fallout was brutal: sales cratered, Modelo swooped in as the new king of American beer, and over a year later Bud Light is still limping like a horse that should have been put down. Ex-Anheuser-Busch execs admit it hasn’t recovered at all. And here’s the kicker—once you lose that loyal customer, they don’t come back. People who think salisbury steak is gourmet eating will switch to Modelo or, in Cracker Barrel’s case, literally any other highway diner, and they’ll never think twice about it.

The stock immediately plunging more than 10% should be all the impetus the board of directors needs to show Julie Felss Masino the door immediately and try and save its brand. How can anyone with a straight face defend this gamble after the smoking ruins of Bud Light and even Jaguar’s own branding fiascos showed what happens when you gut your brand’s entire identity to chase “relevance”?

This isn’t bold leadership, it’s gross incompetence. In one trading session she managed to vaporize over $100 million in shareholder value. One day. So the $700 million renovation now has costed $800 million. If wiping out nine figures in value with a single rebrand isn’t grounds for termination, what exactly is?

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