You took the country out of Cracker Barrel — then put it right back in
The old Cracker Barrel logo (left) sits beside the now-revoked replacement. (Eric Thomas illustration)
Dear Cracker Barrel,
We need to talk about your redesigned logo. The one you released last month to nationwide groans. The one paired with new interior designs for your restaurants. The one that shoved your stock price into a tumble. The one that sent you scrambling back to your traditional logo less than two weeks later.
First, let me say this: The only times I’ve eaten at Cracker Barrel was when I lived in a small town.
Twenty-four years ago, our country home, a two-story farmhouse with a tin roof, squatted in the Indiana fields. My wife and I had a firepit where we shared evening beers while birds and bats swooped above our heads, divebombing bugs under a summer sunset. Behind the home was a red barn, and on its side a previous owner wrote “NO PRISON” as a protest against plans for a jail.
We had a new dog and a few acres. And we ate biscuits and gravy at Cracker Barrel.
If that sounds like the start of a country song, that’s my point.
Your now infamous redesign went wrong by ignoring a quality — let’s call it “country” — that made Cracker Barrel unique.
Because the restaurant is so connected to its country identity, I bet that people would have shrugged if you had renamed the restaurant “Country Barrel.” Instead, the changes to the logo made conservative America gasp and boycott.
Let’s break down your changes to the logo.
Your company, which has five restaurants in Kansas, announced last month that the logo and interior design of its 660 nationwide restaurants would be updated. Because I teach visual design and not interior design, I will stick to your (attempted) logo switch.
For years, your logo featured three main elements. Let’s inspect each one to understand the outrage you absorbed.
On the left side of the logo is a duotone image of a man leaning against a barrel, sitting in a wooden kitchen chair with a woven seat. Clad in overalls, his legs cross as he smiles directly at us. The image mimics prints made from woodcuts, the kind of illustrations printed before mass production of photographs was possible. He is an old-timer shown in an old timey way.
Let’s also note how clumsy that duotone image was. The barrel was illustrated in one style: crisp, linear and simple. The man and the chair? They are illustrated with more nuance and shadowing, reflecting the true textures of real life.
Why am I pointing out this contrast? This is the kind of stuff that drives graphic designers bonkers. I can imagine the in-house graphic design team at corporate headquarters itching to discard this awkward asymmetry: “Let’s ditch grandpa. His illustrated style is so incongruous! So cacophonous!”
On the right side of the logo are the words “Cracker Barrel” held inside a pumpkin-ish shape. So, the logo had a bumpkin and a pumpkin.
The contours of the shape provide room for the upper-case “C” but amputate the letter “B.” (Again, urbane graphic designers wince.) Elsewhere, the stroke of the “k” veers wildly up and to the right. It’s a flourish that mimics handmade country signs before the standardization of typefaces and desktop publishing.
The pumpkin shape that holds the brand name? We can imagine it dangling from two chains on Main Street in a small, southern town. Just like grandpa to the left, the right side of the logo is drenched in country schmaltz.
The final element of the logo was the bottom: the words “OLD COUNTRY STORE.” The typography here is more contemporary through its use of a condensed, all-caps sans serif font. But this is not trendy typography. The logo’s mood remains as safe in its country aesthetic as the center line on a deserted gravel road.
How did the logo redesign go, Cracker Barrel?
You axed two of the three elements, and the final element was drastically changed. Goodbye to the old-timer and his clip-art barrel, side-lit in the country sunset.
And good bye to “OLD COUNTRY STORE.”
If those changes slapped traditionalists in the face, the changes to the design of the brand name were a gut punch.
In the new brand logo, the color changes migrate from the country and right into the suburbs. The former color of the typography was warm brown, a color connected with rural life. Think agriculture (dirt), manual labor (mahogany stain) and barbecue sauce.
The new typography color is nearly black — if not pure black: sleek, balletic and urban. The color choices drive us a few more miles away from the county fair.
You changed the pumpkin shape to a hexagon with rounded corners. The logo’s typography centers itself inside, with plenty of room to spare. If the shape calls back to anything, perhaps it’s vintage Texaco signs. But what’s the use in that?
The redesign abandoned a central value that customers saw in your restaurants: the country charm of reclaimed wood, down-home cooking and an old timer in overalls. No wonder our country’s polarized, high-octane outrage machine shipped a fresh installment of umbrage to the front door of your corporate headquarters.
In the end, Cracker Barrel, you know the irony of this as well as I do.
There are five restaurant locations in Kansas — none of them in the country. All of them are in the exurbs, squatting at the exits from major highways: Junction City, Olathe, Topeka and two in Wichita. The big wide country of western Kansas has zero Cracker Barrels.
But Denver has one.
Your restaurants are surrounded by convenience stores, big-box retailers and interstate motels. You’re as country as Great Clips, Kohl’s and Mizu Sushi.
So maybe your attempted corporate redesign — a purge of the logo’s rural symbolism — is perfect after all. Maybe you were never as quite as country as any of us imagined.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.