Cracker Barrel Fans Mourn the Loss of That Old-Timey Feeling

Diners and employees are divided over Cracker Barrel’s move to declutter its restaurants.

Is Cracker Barrel still Cracker Barrel without all the butter churns and tchotchkes? Loyal diners aren’t so sure.

The chain won the hearts of many Americans with its old-timey country charm. Diners wolfed down pancakes and Southern fried chicken surrounded by vintage advertising signs, old bottles and mechanics’ tools—all meant to evoke the feeling of being in your grandmother’s house.

Now it’s decluttering the decor, and diners and employees are divided.

“I’m secretly wishing that maybe the changes don’t come to our restaurant,” said longtime diner Sharon Triana.

Eating at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store became a ritual for the Miami resident and her parents. Now, the twice-monthly pilgrimage to a location near Homestead, Fla., includes the 34-year-old’s partner and their 10-year-old twins.

After devouring down-home cooking, they shop for candy, toys and other goodies in the retail store attached to the restaurant. But the biggest draw is the rustic atmosphere.

“It’s kind of unique for us to go to a Cracker Barrel, since it kind of feels like we’re not in Miami for a little bit,” said Triana, who owns an online plant shop. Her dad recognizes farming tools hung around the dining area. Her children ask questions about the framed photographs on the wall.

Cracker Barrel won the hearts of many Americans with decor meant to evoke the feeling of being in your grandmother’s house.

The rustic atmosphere featured vintage advertising signs, old bottles and mechanics’ tools.

“It has always felt like being in someone’s home,” Triana said. “But opening the walls, lighter colors and atmosphere, it feels like something colder.”

The extent of the glow-ups, part of a broader update of the brand, varies. Some restaurants are getting a light face-lift—maybe just a fresh coat of paint—while others are getting a full makeover, for a brighter, more modern look. Forty of the chain’s roughly 660 locations have been spruced up in some way as of early May. The company hasn’t publicly shared how it decided which restaurants get which treatment.

The most pressing question for some diners and employees—after when the changes might spread to their location—is where they can scoop up the antiques being taken down. Many fans have hypothesized that the old decor is heading to a sprawling warehouse on Cracker Barrel’s home campus in Lebanon, Tenn., which houses tens of thousands of authentic Americana.

Cracker Barrel said much of the decor is being reused, and what isn’t, is being sold to a third party. It didn’t offer more detail.

For some loyalists, the nostalgia they feel for the chain is about more than just the slice of Americana it offers.

Rachel Love has been going to a Cracker Barrel in Smyrna, Tenn., for most of her life. The food has been a draw, sure, but the real lure is memories of breakfasts and dinners with her grandmother and parents. When it recently closed for several days and trailers were stationed in the parking lot, worry crept in.

At the remodeled location in Smyrna, Tenn., much of the interior is white and fewer antiques hang on the walls.

Love convinced herself that a light spruce up was under way, even as white paint coated the outside of the restaurant. “I thought, well maybe it’s primer,” said the 38-year-old government analyst.

She learned the hard truth Easter Sunday. The outside was still white. So was much of the inside. Fewer antiques hung on the walls. Booths replaced some of the wooden tables. Some of the rocking chairs that have long flanked Cracker Barrel’s storefronts were unseated by Adirondacks.

“It was just heartbreak,” said Love, who chronicled her grief in a series of TikToks. “My 14-year-old son was devastated.”

Negative reactions to the face-lifts are a gift, said Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino. “It’s because people have an emotional connection with the brand,” she told The Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum this month. The chain is working to honor that fandom even as it makes changes, Felss Masino said, adding that its updates are based on discussions with diners and workers.

“People’s immediate reaction to things is like, ‘Oh this isn’t the way it was,’” but they tend to come around, she said.

For at least one employee, the transformation can’t come soon enough.

Rachel Love said ‘it was just heartbreak’ to see the changes at the Smyrna restaurant.

D.T., who asked to go by her initials to protect her job, works at a location in central North Carolina that has yet to be remodeled. But she’s seen the new look in a video sent around to employees. “I honestly was blown away,” she said.

Menus are easier to read with brighter lighting, she said. The flow between retail stores and restaurants benefits from the more open floor plan. Plus, simple decor makes it easier to keep things clean.

D.T. expects the blowback will pass.

“Any restaurant that likes to base itself on a specific time period, it’s going to have to go through that sort of identity crisis,” she said. “But I think it might be overblown. It’s not like Cracker Barrel is trying to roll in with TVs.”

Julie Bidtah is already on board.

Though the 50-year-old Durango, Colo., resident is no Cracker Barrel regular, the restaurant has been a convenient road trip pit stop over the past four decades. In her view, the old look was, well, old.

“It is a little bit cluttered,” the healthcare professional said. “It is a little bit dark. And it is a little bit dusty.”

Still, the chain shouldn’t go too far, she warned: “Your name is Cracker Barrel, so you’re kind of stuck with the whole nostalgia thing.”