Powerline's Week in Pictures Cracker Barrel Goes Woke Edition delivers the goods. As noted there, the CB's recent rebranding effort has been viewed by some as an abandonment of its middle American roots. As mentioned in a comment on the previous post, the chain had already been contending with a decline in customers as a result of Covid and subsequent decisions made to implement marketing and menu changes that led to a shift in focus and a marked decrease in the quality and quantity of the food they were offering. At this point, it doesn't look good for the home team.
"Cracker Barrel had the simplest restaurant model possible, and it was one that made people fall and stay in love with the brand for decades: comfort food in a setting that reminded you of your grandparents’ home. The food was good, the people were kind, and the setting felt like a loving home filled with people who cared about each other. That was it"
With this from Kevin Dahlstrom, who served as a chief marketing officer at several companies in the financial industry, described Cracker Barrel's rebrand as a "fiasco", and wrote on social media:
"The holy grail of marketing is to create a brand that customers give a damn about — and feel some ownership of. It's exceedingly rare and when you have that — as Cracker Barrel did — you NEVER EVER abandon it, you only double down on it,"
4 comments:
My take is much more cynical - faced with a stagnant to declining customer base management undertook what is called a bust out - destroy the value of the company with the intention of crashing the stock and bankrupting the company.
Did they short the stock? Run up corporate indebtedness? I have no idea, but they clearly hate their customer base much in the way that politicians hate the people who live in their countries - see England for example, or Obama.
The company won't recover, and so it goes. Karens don't care. Heinerscheid has found a job in golf, so she paid exactly no price for hiring a tranny.
Too cynical or not cynical enough is the question. This is clearly intentional and malevolent.
This is clearly intentional and malevolent. It's starting to seem so to me as well. I've been wondering why this latest rebranding move matters to me? What's really bothering me about it? I haven't eaten there in years and most likely wouldn't be stopping by to do so in the future even if they did stay the same. So what is it?
Before I read your comment, I was already on the track of wondering if my unsettledness with it might go beyond nostalgia and be linked to a sense of something being off, incongruent, unseemly, bone-headed, or as you put it intentional and malevolent. It's a move that seems deliberately designed to fail, and for what purpose?
I remember reading some time ago how Lefties will infiltrate the board of an established company so they can make a move like this.
Wally World suddenly announced a few years ago they wouldn't carry any Confederate-themed merch. Same with Amazon. And, boy, did they pay for it to the point they quietly reversed it later on.
Same with Bud. The big companies can reverse the tid, but a restaurant company may not be able to.
I had this problem when I used to consult for the owners of bars and restaurants. A new owner who had just purchased a going concern was upset at the drunks who frequented his bar. I explained to him that they were the reason he was in business. They were the ones who were there on a cold snowy night in February. He wanted a more high-class clientele. I dropped him as a client, and they closed six months later.
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