Cracker Barrel Furor Was About More Than a Logo

I don’t often get out to Cracker Barrel, but I’m always happy when I do. I live in Los Angeles, where the nearest location is several communities away. But when I'm traveling in the South, I'll veer off a long country highway for rest and nourishment in a place that evokes the charms of home.

Not my home, necessarily – in LA, we have restaurants like Denny’s and IHOP. Good places to stop for breakfast (even if breakfast is at midnight), but I like Cracker Barrel more. Denny’s is a corporate brand with a bright logo and a perfectly hospitable environment for just sitting down and eating. What it lacks is what most chains lack, and that is a sense of culture − much less a sense of heritage.

Cracker Barrel evokes culture and heritage in a specific and richly American way. Put the accusations of wokeness aside, the corporate office’s now-abandoned decision to change the Cracker Barrel logo from its traditional country imagery to something generic and sterile felt like an attack on a beautiful American cultural identity.