Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mike listening to the first two hours on my way
home from work tonight, and number one mea kulpa. I'm
privately right there with Jesse Kelly scratching my head going,
how contrump do you that? But the other thing that
hit me is how in the hell is ray Epps
(00:21):
not in jail for inciting on January sixth?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Exactly? That's all thanks man, have a good night bye.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Would that maybe have to do with some kind of
timing there, because I don't know if he did anything.
Ray Apps did anything the day of, but there were
certainly videos of him prior saying storm the Capitol, storm
the Capitol, let's go in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But he was saying storm the Capitol the day Uh okay,
So yes, I think that's a clear insightment.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
If he says, you know, storm the Capitol, and then
five hours later they stormed the capitol, is it really
because of him at that point in time?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
I mean it the argument's sake.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, if again that see here's what's great about or
not great. But here's what drives lawyers crazy about questions
like that, that that one's hypothetical, and your hypothetical is
basically two parts. He yells, let's storm the capital. They
storm the capitol five hours later. What happens in the
(01:24):
intervening five.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Hour period, He goes home, goes back to bed, He goes.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Home and goes back to bed, or everybody just mills around.
And then somebody says, oh, by the way, Ray told
us to storm the capitol. Oh he did. Okay, have
you guy finished lunch yet? Yeah? Okay, Well let's go.
I doubt that would I doubt that would fly.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And then you have to plug into all of that.
A prosecutor has to look at the entirety of everything
that he has in front or she has in front
of him, video statements, you know, the witness, what cops
tell him, everything, the police reports everything, and then they
have to make it decision. And the decision has to
be what best And I know this is naive, but
(02:05):
this is what they're supposed to ask what best serves
the interest of justice prosecuting him or not prosecuting him.
What they really ask themselves, though, is this question, do
we think we can prove this case beyond a reasonable
doubt in order to get a conviction? Yeah? And if
the answer is yes, then they will go after him. Now,
(02:27):
I'm sure that you know, if Brockler or somebody else
was listening to me at this very moment, they'd say, no,
we really do ask ourselves that first question, and then
we asked the second question, and then we ask ourselves, well,
but the interest of justice really require that we really
should prosecute this. We're not sure we can win because
we're not sure we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Let's go in front of a jury and see if
(02:47):
we can't try.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And for those kind of curiouses, is that what the
heck we're even talking about. For the first couple of
hours yesterday, we're talking about Trump's executive order on flag
burning and how it's if you do it too in
site violence or riot, then you be punished, which is
pretty much what the law.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Was long well already.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then interestingly, then then I go home, and to
show you how despondent you guys can make me, sometimes
I go home and I am uh, you know, I
walk the dogs. You know, first of all, I gotta
I gotta clear my head. So I go home and
I walk the dogs and you know, piddle around a
little bit. Uh, maybe maybe I don't start the next
(03:28):
day show prep until after lunch, sometimes before lunch, just
depends on what kind of mood I'm in. I didn't
start yesterday's until after lunch, walked the dogs, came home,
took a short twenty minute power nap.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And what was for lunch?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Do you truly want to know? Why are you gonna?
Are you gonna mock me?
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Of course?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Okay, water crackers, peanut butter, and a little bit of
sugar free jelly on top of.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
That, huh, And and a McDonald's coke, but flavor jelly.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Uh, strawberry yesterday strawberry? Yeah, when sugar free? We have
four choices of jelly, and our refrigerator, the Bonamy or
whatever it is that's made by the company. This tihow
was tied to, you know, saving the Nazis in Germany.
We have which is just a thousand sugar Oh my god,
(04:27):
is it so good? Strawberry and and cherry. But I thought, no,
if I'm gonna do my sugar, I'm gonna do it
somewhere else. So I did. The sugar free jelly, which
interestingly is the Kroger brand of sugar free jelly, is
actually pretty good. The name brand sugar free jelly like
Smuckers and all of those awful, awful, awful. So I
(04:49):
had I don't know, five or six crackers like that
and a diet code for lunch. All yeah, and then
I go down.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
A four year old.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
For a four year old, it's comfort food. It's really good, true,
and it's not that bad. First of all, water crackers,
zero sugar in those carbs. Yes they're carves there, but
they're water crackers. And the water crackers taste so good.
And then the peanut butter has a little bit of
(05:17):
sugar in it, not much. You can get no sugar
added peanut butter. And then of course the sugar free
jelly and the diet coke. So I had a chemical
infused lunch yesterday.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Delicious.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. Now today's different. I'm not quite sure where, but
I think I'm going to lunch with a friend today
and I'm he'll be sushi or something. I don't want.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Grownup meal.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, I have a grown up meal today. Well, I'll
be out in public, so you know I need to
I can't actually ask for I'm sure there are restaurants
that serve peeb and j I'm sure somebody I'm I,
don't you imagine it's like snooze or someplace like that. Oh,
I'm sure probably serves peeb and J. But no, I
won't do that. And then I sit down to do
show prep. And as I tell people, and this is
(05:58):
the gospel truth, I'm always looking at text messages. By always,
I don't mean I'm constantly looking at them, but I
look at text messages throughout the day. Like if I
just sit down and before I start doom scrolling or
looking at X or whatever, I'll look at text messages.
And I looked at it at a couple of them,
and I was just like, I've totally failed because I'm
(06:21):
sure it's disappeared by now. I'm not going to find
because there's too many sins. Yesterday, but somebody wrote to
me and said essentially that they were they were a
(06:42):
vent and anyway they they would like shoot anybody that
killed shoot or kill anybody that burned an American flag. Well,
not the crime. And I understand the passion, and I
understand the genuine respect for the flag because I share
(07:07):
that respect for the flag also, But I can hold
two thoughts in my brain at the same time. And
while I find burning the flag offensive or desecrating the
flag offensive. I recognize that in certain circumstances, that is
someone exercising the free speech. And just as I may
not like their speech, I may not like their desecration
of the flag, but I understand their right to do so.
(07:30):
So I just feel like I, at least for that listener,
I may have totally lost the messaging somewhere before I
get to the first story, which is just to give
you a warning, is Cracker Barrel. I may have a
little tenfoil had about Cracker Barrel, except for some facts
(07:51):
I'm finding out. Have you ever thought about cracker Barrel? Maybe?
Perhaps just being that was the plan all along.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
They wanted to be in the media.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They wanted to in the media. It's like you and
I laughing yesterday something about native ads. I told you
what I got in the car that Fox was running
a native ad about something.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Dog food because it was National Dog Day yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes well, whatever they were running the native ad for
yesterday in the car was not dog food, but it
was a native ad. Okay, don't remember what it was,
which shows how ineffective it was. But then we come
in here and you're talking about Oh look, they're they're
doing a native ad. They're they're, they're they're showing dog
food on national television. Native ads, I just native ads
(08:32):
drive me crazy, which is you know, which is why
if I were going to retire, I would certainly recommend
people going to the retirement Planning stare of the Rockies
and calling them or going to their website at rbcenter
dot com. That's a native ad, because I know I'm
talking about retirement, but I'm not talking about retirement. I
do want to go for Before I get to Cupcracker Barrel,
(08:55):
I want to go to something that happened last week
that was discussed in the news last night, the details
of which I don't know other than what the original
compromise was. You know that the Colorado Pullit Bureau has
been in special session because we have a one plus
billion dollar budget hole. Emily Saroda, wife or spouse of
(09:20):
David Serota, who is so he is a he is
to the left of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Cassi A Cortez.
And you know he and I used to share this
studio together at one time. What a freaking disaster that was. Anyway,
Emily Saroda, his wife. I watched her giving some floor speech.
(09:42):
I don't think it was from yesterday, but during the
special session about they want to end there's a tax
exemption of some sort. I don't fully understand it, and
I don't care to know the details of it. All
I know is that there is a tax break for
business owners that they can deduct. It's almost I think
(10:06):
it's actually a tax credit that they can use in
their small business for all of the cost of preparing
and taking care of their sales tax. Are you familiar
with that driving Did you guys ever deal with that
or is that something since post subway? I don't think
we have y Yeah, okay, So to me it seems
(10:28):
like a very good tax credit. You, in essence are
I think as a tax collector for the state, and
so they were giving you a credit for certain percentage
of expenses up to a certain volume of sales tax
and then you can no longer take that tax credit.
And she was talking about, well, she.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Wasn't sure whether the exemption should be five hundred thousand
dollars or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever.
But you know, if I had my way, it would
be zero, because you know, we just were just giving
away too many tax credits to small business and I thought,
my lord, all these people can do is think about
how to take more of your money, as opposed to
reducing their own spending. I truly, and I'm sorry to
(11:12):
be so pissed off at six seventeen forty two in
the morning, but good grief, people in Colorado, we have
a spending problem. Revenues in this state have gone up
year after year after year. Taxes go up year after
year after year. Instead, here's here's the compromise that really
(11:33):
just torqued me. A group of Western Slope lawmakers last
week abandoned their attempt to save money by stopping the
reintroduction of.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Wolves into the state. That's a spending issue. Western Slope
lawmakers said, you know what, here's the way we could
we could stop doing that and save money. Of course,
Polus had to intervene because when that news broke Merlin Marlin,
(12:10):
what's his husband's name, Marlin Marlin? Yeah, why keep it
saying Merlin? Marlon Reese, Yeah, Marl. I keep wouldn't saying
Merlin Marlin. Marlin felled to the floor, curled up in
a fetal position and started to cry his eyes out
and said he was going to cut the governor off
from any more, you know, hanky panky until he got
that stopped. Well, they got it stopped. They did reach
(12:36):
a deal, however, to reduce the amount that we spend
on reintroducing wolves by two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and
they're going to redirect some money to and I don't
know the details, and I don't care to know the details,
but the details are to reduce health care costs in Colorado.
(13:02):
What do we spend on health care in Colorado? Billions
of dollars. They're gonna reduce it by two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. We're still gonna take money and introduce wolves.
That program will continue, but it's like a federal government
spending cut. We didn't really cut, We just reduced the
amount of the increase. So what they're going to do is,
we're still gonna spend money on wolves, but we're gonna
(13:23):
take a quarter of a million dollars of that and
somehow apply it to quote, reducing health care costs in Colorado.
Whatever the hell that means. What are you gonna do
randomly pick people and pay it for their prescription drugs
for a year or whatever. I mean, it's so damn stupid,
But think about the relative amount. Two hundred and fifty
(13:44):
thousand dollars in a multi billion dollar budget. That's like
me deciding, you know what, I'm going to once a
week cut out one diet coke in order to help
me pay for a brand new, say twenty twenty six
bmwnsport eighty one thousand dollars car. Yeah, that's how stupid
it is. And that's what they've done. So they're reducing spending,
(14:11):
not by reducing spending, but by reallocating it sending it.
We're still going to spend the money, but we're not
going to spend clients money as much money on wolves.
We're going to spend a little bit of money on
reducing healthcare costs. That is. You wonder why what are
(14:34):
we calling the ads native native Native ads? We'll look
it up. Native ads is. If you ever watch the
Today Show, that's that's forgob it or nine zero two six,
if you ever watched the in any of the morning
new shows, including Fox, all of them. Companies will announce
(14:58):
if we get a new menu item. McDonald's has a
new menu item. It's a it's a bacon cheeseburger, but
the bacon's on the bottom half and the cheeses on
the top half. It's a great deal, and we're charging
fifty cents extra for it. But everybody loves that. We
got to you know, it's really cool. We're gonna call it,
you know, they give it some funny name, and then
they send out a press release to the cabal, to
(15:22):
all of the radio and I get. I get press
releases every day. Unfortunately, most of the ones I get,
which maybe has something to do with the company I
work for, are usually from liberal organizations telling me how
bad enforcing laws against illegal immigration is. So they'll take
that press release and they'll turn it into a package
(15:46):
and they'll talk about it. So that yesterday or whenever
it was that National Dog Day?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
When was that?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Today? Tuesday? It was yesterday? Well I took my dogs
for a walk. So there and they got their usual treats.
They turn it into an entire segment where all they're
doing is talking about you know, they got different dog
treats and dog things all up, set stuff on the
table and they're all talking about their dogs, and they're
you know, they and they're showing the brands and they're
showing everything, and you know, they got some spokesperson from
(16:13):
you know, from Chewy or from you know, Hills or
something from you know, Perina, and they're they're talking about
house National Dog Day and these are great treats, you know,
and you should do this and that. Those are native ads.
They're commercials for a product buried inside the content to
make you later on subliminally think about, well, I gotta
(16:35):
get some dog food. Oh where did I hear about Purina?
I heard about Costco dog food? I heard about Sam's
dog Where was that? Oh? Yeah, they were talking about
Fox and Friends, so it must be good. I think
I'll go buy it. Nady VADs drives me absolutely batty,
But then you know what, just about everything calls me
batty causes me to go BATTYE cracker barrel. I think
(17:01):
I've confessed that I've been in a cracker barrel on
a road trip or maybe in a you know, I'm
working a disaster somewhere and we may have gone into
a cracker barrel because they tend to be located along
an interstate and they're easy to get to in and
out of, and so I've been in one. Was not impressed,
(17:22):
but neither was I offended. I was just like, Okay,
you're eating at a chain restaurant on an interstate highway.
Don't expect gourmet food. And in so far as the
store is concerned, I found personally, I found the store obnoxious,
just totally obnoxious. We have I'm sure you have friends too.
(17:45):
We have friends.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
My mom's this way. Her house looks like a Cracker
Barrel store, like in the in the Den area. I
mean there's just knick knacks and stuff everywhere. Well, the
Cracker Barrel flide into their rebranding debacle the game with
a phone call at four point thirty in the afternoon
(18:07):
on May sixteen, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Michael, my husband doesn't call him water crackers. They're good
old saltines. And he has old man food that young
person's food, like peanut butter and jelly and crackers. He
has the crackers with cottage cheese. That's old man food.
Thanks you fancied up a little bit and put a
cucumber on there.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Well you could, but I really hate to call her out.
But there's a huge difference between a saltine cracker and
a water cracker.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Ain't gonna cause a fight.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I know. Here it goes. Go online Kingsoopers dot com
or I don't Trader Joe's dot com or whatever and
look up water crackers. There is a famous brand called
Cars c a R r apostrophe. Yes, Cars water crackers.
(19:05):
That's probably the standard of water crackers. Those are the
water crackers that those are the crackers that you would
put caviar on. But I don't like caviar. I like
peanut butter and jelly saltines. No, that's an entirely different
group of crackers.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
A quick search in the AA overview says the main
difference between saltine crackers that they're leavened with baking soda
and are typically dry and crisps with a sprinkle of salt,
while water crackers traditionally clean only flour and water.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, and they're just delicious because that's all just flour
and water. I mean, that's it. It's just there's something
about It's like eating cookie dough, raw cookie dough. It's
just muh so. I I hope I helped educate Kathleen
a little bit today in the fine of culinary delights
(20:02):
because her husband may really like water crackers with Cuttie's
cheese on it, because that way you get the well,
it's just a great blend of flavors. ABC News.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
The increasing popularity with which our political system is getting
involved with brand decisions seems to be escalating in recent
years and has definitely seemed to have a more significant influence.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's ABC News. That's somebody named Catherine Tangalikus Lippert sounds
like a medication, doesn't. If you suffer from water cracker syndrome,
you needus Slippert to you know. However, be careful of
the following, you know, side effects death. So on four
point thirty PM on May sixteen last year, that day
(20:51):
was when Crocker Barrel's new CEO, Julie false Messino, she
got on the phone with investors and that's when she
told the investors the details of a strategic transformation plan.
And the board of directors that approve this. Did anybody
ever stop and say why? I mean, I'm always curious
(21:13):
about Dragon knows that anytime we get a corporate email
or an email even from local management My general question
usually is what why, why are we doing this? What's
the purpose of this, what's it going to accomplish? And
by the way, then it gets to the next level
where I'm like, they are they joking? Do they really
(21:35):
think it's going to accomplish what they think is going
to accomplish. We're dealing with an email right now. That
is something that I've been kind of doing. Slightly different
than doing it for how long? Dragons? Six months are longer?
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Now?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
For sure? Yeah, for quite a while. And now all
of a sudden it's like, and you will be held
accountable for doing this? Oh well, that's that's certainly a
a pusive way to approach things. You shall be held
accountable if you don't do this.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Thanks for the support, Yeah, thanks for.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And of course it ends with, you know, an exclamation point.
Everybody's all happy and goes on. The first five pillars
of this remarketing strategic transformation plan would be refining and
then evolving the brand across all touch points. Oh my god,
was this written by a consultant. We're going to refine
the brand and then it's going to evolve the brand
(22:32):
across all touch points. Interestingly, Cedar Bagloria is a top
investor in Cracker Barrel. He gave four warnings that the
rebranding was obvious folly, and apparently did so with filings
(22:56):
with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He wrote an escathing
seven page letter to the shareholders that Cracker Barrel is
not a broken brand, but it has a broken board.
Call I'm an investor in a certain company, and I
kind of like to write that kind of letter, but
(23:17):
I'm sure that there would be ramifications that I wouldn't like.
Then he put together, I love this kind of investor,
although he's kind of tilting at windmills like most of
us are when it comes to our employers or our
businesses that we'd have to deal with. He laid out
his criticism in a one hundred one hundred and twenty
(23:38):
page slide deck. So he goes on power Point and
put I assume PowerPoint maybe it was pages, I don't know,
and puts together one hundred and twenty page deck with
the title in all caps, Cracker Barrel is in crisis
next to the logo the old man in the overalls
on a barrel. Now, while the dynamics of company executives,
(24:03):
pursuing political correctness, woke woke, rebranding it. That's all well
documented the timeline of the last year and a half.
This just didn't happen overnight, which most people think because
it just hit the news that happened overnight. On the
call in May of last year, the CEO announced that
(24:24):
she had hired a new leading branding agency to refine
and strengthen positioning to delight existing and new guests. They
were going to enhance the menu, evolve the storing guest experience,
winning in the digital and off premise categories, and elevating
(24:45):
the employee experience. Dragon I can attest that we've heard
this kind of stuff here. We've heard exactly this kind
of stuff. I mean, I know in your company you've
heard exactly the same thing. Hey, we're going a new direction,
or we're going to try something new. And if you've
been with the company long enough, you know that when
they try something new, you're going, wait a minute, we
(25:08):
did that five years ago, ten years ago. That's right,
we did five years ago, ten years ago. Corporate America
is just absolutely eft. I mean, it's it's amazing to me.
Now other investors also didn't react well to the news
because the very next day, I'm not talking about the
recent slide. I'm talking about May of twenty twenty four.
(25:31):
The very next day the share price fell to forty
eight dollars ninety eight cents. So I was curious, who
is this shareholder? But Glory. He was born in Tehran
in nineteen seventy seven. He fled to San Antonio with
his family after the Iyatola company came to power Comane,
(25:53):
no comane came to power working at it Working. First
they had a Persian carpet store. He built a business
as a teenager. Then in his twenties he started an
investment firm, Baguary Holdings. It now trades on the New
York Stock Exchange, and he invests in a series of
(26:14):
all American restaurant brands, Western Sisling, Friendlies, Steak and Shake,
and Cracker Barrel now a series of Cracker Barrel boards.
And senior executives dismiss him as a wayward activist investor
and that he has suspect ultimate agenda, and that is
so his criticism, you know, fell in deaf ears. He
(26:37):
has a reputation of being a bully and an evil
genius with a type X personality and he's driven by money.
Why would think that would be the kind of shaholder
you would want? You would want a shareholder, an activist
shareholder that is driven by the company's bottom line. Cracker
Barrel responded to this singular investor with their All with
(26:59):
Us separate web page devoted to investors. So they went
right ahead hired a new marketing chief marketing officer in
July of last year. She came from MGM Resorts, doubling
down on expensive story modelings and refreshes, and in the
last year's annual report included a diversity, Equity and Inclusions section.
(27:23):
They featured seven business resource groups for promoting diverse members,
black leaders, Hispanic, Latino culture, LGBTQ, plus awareness, military veterans,
and women leaders. Kind of scary. In the report, these
same executives were warning that the failure to achieve or
sustain their strategic transformation plan with this rebranding quote could
(27:48):
adversely affect our results. Now, I'm just telling you a
lawyer made them put that in there. A lawyer that
reviewed their SEC filings said, we've got a some sort
of disclaimer in here because we're going off in a
different direction. But I also guaranted them to you that
there were people on the board, there were people within
(28:09):
the the C suite that were thinking to themselves, you
think this is really gonna work. People were probably pretty
nervous about it. You're taking a well known you know what,
this is new coke, new coke, this is Coca Cola
doing new coke. Let you know, let let's go do
something new. And you get group think going, and everybody
(28:30):
starts thinking the same way, and boom, you're off. You're
off to the races. Well by By October eighth of
last year, on Tamer's birthday, this activist investor had had enough.
He sent a seven page letter to the shareholders warning
them about the obvious folly green lighting Mesino and her
(28:51):
transformation plan, criticizing the board's dysfunction and mismanagement, and concluded
that Cracker Barrel is in perilous times. And he laid
out the numbers. All right, this story fascinates me, yes,
because of everything we're going to talk about in terms
of the politics of it. But when you dig into
(29:12):
the business side of it, holy cow. The warning signs
that you know, remember the old bubblegum machine that get
put on top of a cop car. You know it
would swirl around, you know with the red light. Well,
that was going off internally in this company, and nobody
was paying any attention to it. Jimminy Christmas. In twenty eleven,
(29:35):
Cracker barrels one hundred and sixty seven million dollars in
operating income on two point four billion dollars in revenues.
By twenty twenty three, one point four billion in cumulative
capital expenditures, Operating income had fallen to one hundred twenty
one million dollars, even as the revenues went past three
(29:56):
point four billion dollars. He wrote in his letter, the
problem lies not in the seating, but it getting more
people to sit in the seats. We do not believe
changing the furniture and altering the decor or going to
change the company's trajectory or solve the company's underlying problem
of declining traffic. Do you ever stop and think that
(30:17):
maybe the product that you're producing that people are getting
tired of the product. And by the product, I don't
mean it's necessarily mean the chicken fried steak, or even
the store or the and by the store, I mean
the place where you go buy all that crap, but
that maybe you need to update it, or maybe the
(30:39):
menu has you know, you know, your chicken fried steak's
not nearly as good as it used to be because
you're trying to cut costs, you're trying to cut corners,
and you're doing it all in the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Hey, Michael, you really should step it up for lunch
today and try a cut up hot dog.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah. I might do that. Yeah, some roller food from
on the quick trip hot dog with mustard. Not catchup
by the way, you know, radio is so frustrating now,
Gouber number eighty three fifteen. I'm not picking on you,
but I am going to use you as an example.
(31:17):
I started out this discussion because to me, this is
a fascinating business discussion about Cracker Barrel. And I started
out the very probably the very first thing I said,
was something to the effect that, Dragan, don't you think
that maybe this whole Cracker Barrel rebranding and then the
apology was a big just all planned that it was
(31:40):
a way to get in the news, you know, by Hey,
let's let's say we're going to rebrand and do all
of this and then let's back off and apologize. I
know they've apologized, that's the other half of the story.
But most people, in fact, I would venture to say,
including you eighty three fifteen, did not know about the
(32:04):
activist investor and that this started way back in twenty
twenty four, which is why I made the joke about
do you think this was all planned? Because nobody in
the right mind would plan this kind of shareholder destruction
of losing you know, one hundred million dollars in value
or whatever it was in your share price and then
going oopsie, never mind, We're gonna come back. But it
(32:27):
shows the stupidity of corporate America, and I think to
be a little I gotta be careful how I say this.
I think some of the people, as I look over
my shoulder, whether that be millennials or gen Z or
gen Xer's failed to have the kind of life experiences
(32:51):
or have been brought up in such a coddled way
that they think they've got the answer to everything, and
not recking that Boomers, Millennials, we've got all the wealth,
weet all the money. We're the ones that right now
we may be doing a lot of consuming in terms
(33:11):
of buying stuff, but we eat out of luck and
we travel and we spend money and don't be feeding
and shoving down out throw of a bunch of Dei crap.
Now the apology, Yeah, that's next.
Mike listening to the first two hours on my way
home from work tonight, and number one mea kulpa. I'm
privately right there with Jesse Kelly scratching my head going,
how contrump do you that? But the other thing that
hit me is how in the hell is ray Epps
(00:21):
not in jail for inciting on January sixth?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Exactly? That's all thanks man, have a good night bye.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Would that maybe have to do with some kind of
timing there, because I don't know if he did anything.
Ray Apps did anything the day of, but there were
certainly videos of him prior saying storm the Capitol, storm
the Capitol, let's go in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But he was saying storm the Capitol the day Uh okay,
So yes, I think that's a clear insightment.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
If he says, you know, storm the Capitol, and then
five hours later they stormed the capitol, is it really
because of him at that point in time?
Speaker 4 (00:59):
I mean it the argument's sake.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, if again that see here's what's great about or
not great. But here's what drives lawyers crazy about questions
like that, that that one's hypothetical, and your hypothetical is
basically two parts. He yells, let's storm the capital. They
storm the capitol five hours later. What happens in the
(01:24):
intervening five.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Hour period, He goes home, goes back to bed, He goes.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Home and goes back to bed, or everybody just mills around.
And then somebody says, oh, by the way, Ray told
us to storm the capitol. Oh he did. Okay, have
you guy finished lunch yet? Yeah? Okay, Well let's go.
I doubt that would I doubt that would fly.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
And then you have to plug into all of that.
A prosecutor has to look at the entirety of everything
that he has in front or she has in front
of him, video statements, you know, the witness, what cops
tell him, everything, the police reports everything, and then they
have to make it decision. And the decision has to
be what best And I know this is naive, but
(02:05):
this is what they're supposed to ask what best serves
the interest of justice prosecuting him or not prosecuting him.
What they really ask themselves, though, is this question, do
we think we can prove this case beyond a reasonable
doubt in order to get a conviction? Yeah? And if
the answer is yes, then they will go after him. Now,
(02:27):
I'm sure that you know, if Brockler or somebody else
was listening to me at this very moment, they'd say, no,
we really do ask ourselves that first question, and then
we asked the second question, and then we ask ourselves, well,
but the interest of justice really require that we really
should prosecute this. We're not sure we can win because
we're not sure we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Let's go in front of a jury and see if
(02:47):
we can't try.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And for those kind of curiouses, is that what the
heck we're even talking about. For the first couple of
hours yesterday, we're talking about Trump's executive order on flag
burning and how it's if you do it too in
site violence or riot, then you be punished, which is
pretty much what the law.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Was long well already.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
And then interestingly, then then I go home, and to
show you how despondent you guys can make me, sometimes
I go home and I am uh, you know, I
walk the dogs. You know, first of all, I gotta
I gotta clear my head. So I go home and
I walk the dogs and you know, piddle around a
little bit. Uh, maybe maybe I don't start the next
(03:28):
day show prep until after lunch, sometimes before lunch, just
depends on what kind of mood I'm in. I didn't
start yesterday's until after lunch, walked the dogs, came home,
took a short twenty minute power nap.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And what was for lunch?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Do you truly want to know? Why are you gonna?
Are you gonna mock me?
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Of course?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Okay, water crackers, peanut butter, and a little bit of
sugar free jelly on top of.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
That, huh, And and a McDonald's coke, but flavor jelly.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Uh, strawberry yesterday strawberry? Yeah, when sugar free? We have
four choices of jelly, and our refrigerator, the Bonamy or
whatever it is that's made by the company. This tihow
was tied to, you know, saving the Nazis in Germany.
We have which is just a thousand sugar Oh my god,
(04:27):
is it so good? Strawberry and and cherry. But I thought, no,
if I'm gonna do my sugar, I'm gonna do it
somewhere else. So I did. The sugar free jelly, which
interestingly is the Kroger brand of sugar free jelly, is
actually pretty good. The name brand sugar free jelly like
Smuckers and all of those awful, awful, awful. So I
(04:49):
had I don't know, five or six crackers like that
and a diet code for lunch. All yeah, and then
I go down.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
A four year old.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
For a four year old, it's comfort food. It's really good, true,
and it's not that bad. First of all, water crackers,
zero sugar in those carbs. Yes they're carves there, but
they're water crackers. And the water crackers taste so good.
And then the peanut butter has a little bit of
(05:17):
sugar in it, not much. You can get no sugar
added peanut butter. And then of course the sugar free
jelly and the diet coke. So I had a chemical
infused lunch yesterday.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Delicious.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah. Now today's different. I'm not quite sure where, but
I think I'm going to lunch with a friend today
and I'm he'll be sushi or something. I don't want.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Grownup meal.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, I have a grown up meal today. Well, I'll
be out in public, so you know I need to
I can't actually ask for I'm sure there are restaurants
that serve peeb and j I'm sure somebody I'm I,
don't you imagine it's like snooze or someplace like that. Oh,
I'm sure probably serves peeb and J. But no, I
won't do that. And then I sit down to do
show prep. And as I tell people, and this is
(05:58):
the gospel truth, I'm always looking at text messages. By always,
I don't mean I'm constantly looking at them, but I
look at text messages throughout the day. Like if I
just sit down and before I start doom scrolling or
looking at X or whatever, I'll look at text messages.
And I looked at it at a couple of them,
and I was just like, I've totally failed because I'm
(06:21):
sure it's disappeared by now. I'm not going to find
because there's too many sins. Yesterday, but somebody wrote to
me and said essentially that they were they were a
(06:42):
vent and anyway they they would like shoot anybody that
killed shoot or kill anybody that burned an American flag. Well,
not the crime. And I understand the passion, and I
understand the genuine respect for the flag because I share
(07:07):
that respect for the flag also, But I can hold
two thoughts in my brain at the same time. And
while I find burning the flag offensive or desecrating the
flag offensive. I recognize that in certain circumstances, that is
someone exercising the free speech. And just as I may
not like their speech, I may not like their desecration
of the flag, but I understand their right to do so.
(07:30):
So I just feel like I, at least for that listener,
I may have totally lost the messaging somewhere before I
get to the first story, which is just to give
you a warning, is Cracker Barrel. I may have a
little tenfoil had about Cracker Barrel, except for some facts
(07:51):
I'm finding out. Have you ever thought about cracker Barrel? Maybe?
Perhaps just being that was the plan all along.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
They wanted to be in the media.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They wanted to in the media. It's like you and
I laughing yesterday something about native ads. I told you
what I got in the car that Fox was running
a native ad about something.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Dog food because it was National Dog Day yesterday.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes well, whatever they were running the native ad for
yesterday in the car was not dog food, but it
was a native ad. Okay, don't remember what it was,
which shows how ineffective it was. But then we come
in here and you're talking about Oh look, they're they're
doing a native ad. They're they're, they're they're showing dog
food on national television. Native ads, I just native ads
(08:32):
drive me crazy, which is you know, which is why
if I were going to retire, I would certainly recommend
people going to the retirement Planning stare of the Rockies
and calling them or going to their website at rbcenter
dot com. That's a native ad, because I know I'm
talking about retirement, but I'm not talking about retirement. I
do want to go for Before I get to Cupcracker Barrel,
(08:55):
I want to go to something that happened last week
that was discussed in the news last night, the details
of which I don't know other than what the original
compromise was. You know that the Colorado Pullit Bureau has
been in special session because we have a one plus
billion dollar budget hole. Emily Saroda, wife or spouse of
(09:20):
David Serota, who is so he is a he is
to the left of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Cassi A Cortez.
And you know he and I used to share this
studio together at one time. What a freaking disaster that was. Anyway,
Emily Saroda, his wife. I watched her giving some floor speech.
(09:42):
I don't think it was from yesterday, but during the
special session about they want to end there's a tax
exemption of some sort. I don't fully understand it, and
I don't care to know the details of it. All
I know is that there is a tax break for
business owners that they can deduct. It's almost I think
(10:06):
it's actually a tax credit that they can use in
their small business for all of the cost of preparing
and taking care of their sales tax. Are you familiar
with that driving Did you guys ever deal with that
or is that something since post subway? I don't think
we have y Yeah, okay, So to me it seems
(10:28):
like a very good tax credit. You, in essence are
I think as a tax collector for the state, and
so they were giving you a credit for certain percentage
of expenses up to a certain volume of sales tax
and then you can no longer take that tax credit.
And she was talking about, well, she.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Wasn't sure whether the exemption should be five hundred thousand
dollars or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever.
But you know, if I had my way, it would
be zero, because you know, we just were just giving
away too many tax credits to small business and I thought,
my lord, all these people can do is think about
how to take more of your money, as opposed to
reducing their own spending. I truly, and I'm sorry to
(11:12):
be so pissed off at six seventeen forty two in
the morning, but good grief, people in Colorado, we have
a spending problem. Revenues in this state have gone up
year after year after year. Taxes go up year after
year after year. Instead, here's here's the compromise that really
(11:33):
just torqued me. A group of Western Slope lawmakers last
week abandoned their attempt to save money by stopping the
reintroduction of.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Wolves into the state. That's a spending issue. Western Slope
lawmakers said, you know what, here's the way we could
we could stop doing that and save money. Of course,
Polus had to intervene because when that news broke Merlin Marlin,
(12:10):
what's his husband's name, Marlin Marlin? Yeah, why keep it
saying Merlin? Marlon Reese, Yeah, Marl. I keep wouldn't saying
Merlin Marlin. Marlin felled to the floor, curled up in
a fetal position and started to cry his eyes out
and said he was going to cut the governor off
from any more, you know, hanky panky until he got
that stopped. Well, they got it stopped. They did reach
(12:36):
a deal, however, to reduce the amount that we spend
on reintroducing wolves by two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and
they're going to redirect some money to and I don't
know the details, and I don't care to know the details,
but the details are to reduce health care costs in Colorado.
(13:02):
What do we spend on health care in Colorado? Billions
of dollars. They're gonna reduce it by two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. We're still gonna take money and introduce wolves.
That program will continue, but it's like a federal government
spending cut. We didn't really cut, We just reduced the
amount of the increase. So what they're going to do is,
we're still gonna spend money on wolves, but we're gonna
(13:23):
take a quarter of a million dollars of that and
somehow apply it to quote, reducing health care costs in Colorado.
Whatever the hell that means. What are you gonna do
randomly pick people and pay it for their prescription drugs
for a year or whatever. I mean, it's so damn stupid,
But think about the relative amount. Two hundred and fifty
(13:44):
thousand dollars in a multi billion dollar budget. That's like
me deciding, you know what, I'm going to once a
week cut out one diet coke in order to help
me pay for a brand new, say twenty twenty six
bmwnsport eighty one thousand dollars car. Yeah, that's how stupid
it is. And that's what they've done. So they're reducing spending,
(14:11):
not by reducing spending, but by reallocating it sending it.
We're still going to spend the money, but we're not
going to spend clients money as much money on wolves.
We're going to spend a little bit of money on
reducing healthcare costs. That is. You wonder why what are
(14:34):
we calling the ads native native Native ads? We'll look
it up. Native ads is. If you ever watch the
Today Show, that's that's forgob it or nine zero two six,
if you ever watched the in any of the morning
new shows, including Fox, all of them. Companies will announce
(14:58):
if we get a new menu item. McDonald's has a
new menu item. It's a it's a bacon cheeseburger, but
the bacon's on the bottom half and the cheeses on
the top half. It's a great deal, and we're charging
fifty cents extra for it. But everybody loves that. We
got to you know, it's really cool. We're gonna call it,
you know, they give it some funny name, and then
they send out a press release to the cabal, to
(15:22):
all of the radio and I get. I get press
releases every day. Unfortunately, most of the ones I get,
which maybe has something to do with the company I
work for, are usually from liberal organizations telling me how
bad enforcing laws against illegal immigration is. So they'll take
that press release and they'll turn it into a package
(15:46):
and they'll talk about it. So that yesterday or whenever
it was that National Dog Day?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
When was that?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Today? Tuesday? It was yesterday? Well I took my dogs
for a walk. So there and they got their usual treats.
They turn it into an entire segment where all they're
doing is talking about you know, they got different dog
treats and dog things all up, set stuff on the
table and they're all talking about their dogs, and they're
you know, they and they're showing the brands and they're
showing everything, and you know, they got some spokesperson from
(16:13):
you know, from Chewy or from you know, Hills or
something from you know, Perina, and they're they're talking about
house National Dog Day and these are great treats, you know,
and you should do this and that. Those are native ads.
They're commercials for a product buried inside the content to
make you later on subliminally think about, well, I gotta
(16:35):
get some dog food. Oh where did I hear about Purina?
I heard about Costco dog food? I heard about Sam's
dog Where was that? Oh? Yeah, they were talking about
Fox and Friends, so it must be good. I think
I'll go buy it. Nady VADs drives me absolutely batty,
But then you know what, just about everything calls me
batty causes me to go BATTYE cracker barrel. I think
(17:01):
I've confessed that I've been in a cracker barrel on
a road trip or maybe in a you know, I'm
working a disaster somewhere and we may have gone into
a cracker barrel because they tend to be located along
an interstate and they're easy to get to in and
out of, and so I've been in one. Was not impressed,
(17:22):
but neither was I offended. I was just like, Okay,
you're eating at a chain restaurant on an interstate highway.
Don't expect gourmet food. And in so far as the
store is concerned, I found personally, I found the store obnoxious,
just totally obnoxious. We have I'm sure you have friends too.
(17:45):
We have friends.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
My mom's this way. Her house looks like a Cracker
Barrel store, like in the in the Den area. I
mean there's just knick knacks and stuff everywhere. Well, the
Cracker Barrel flide into their rebranding debacle the game with
a phone call at four point thirty in the afternoon
(18:07):
on May sixteen, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Michael, my husband doesn't call him water crackers. They're good
old saltines. And he has old man food that young
person's food, like peanut butter and jelly and crackers. He
has the crackers with cottage cheese. That's old man food.
Thanks you fancied up a little bit and put a
cucumber on there.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Well you could, but I really hate to call her out.
But there's a huge difference between a saltine cracker and
a water cracker.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Ain't gonna cause a fight.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I know. Here it goes. Go online Kingsoopers dot com
or I don't Trader Joe's dot com or whatever and
look up water crackers. There is a famous brand called
Cars c a R r apostrophe. Yes, Cars water crackers.
(19:05):
That's probably the standard of water crackers. Those are the
water crackers that those are the crackers that you would
put caviar on. But I don't like caviar. I like
peanut butter and jelly saltines. No, that's an entirely different
group of crackers.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
A quick search in the AA overview says the main
difference between saltine crackers that they're leavened with baking soda
and are typically dry and crisps with a sprinkle of salt,
while water crackers traditionally clean only flour and water.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, and they're just delicious because that's all just flour
and water. I mean, that's it. It's just there's something
about It's like eating cookie dough, raw cookie dough. It's
just muh so. I I hope I helped educate Kathleen
a little bit today in the fine of culinary delights
(20:02):
because her husband may really like water crackers with Cuttie's
cheese on it, because that way you get the well,
it's just a great blend of flavors. ABC News.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
The increasing popularity with which our political system is getting
involved with brand decisions seems to be escalating in recent
years and has definitely seemed to have a more significant influence.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's ABC News. That's somebody named Catherine Tangalikus Lippert sounds
like a medication, doesn't. If you suffer from water cracker syndrome,
you needus Slippert to you know. However, be careful of
the following, you know, side effects death. So on four
point thirty PM on May sixteen last year, that day
(20:51):
was when Crocker Barrel's new CEO, Julie false Messino, she
got on the phone with investors and that's when she
told the investors the details of a strategic transformation plan.
And the board of directors that approve this. Did anybody
ever stop and say why? I mean, I'm always curious
(21:13):
about Dragon knows that anytime we get a corporate email
or an email even from local management My general question
usually is what why, why are we doing this? What's
the purpose of this, what's it going to accomplish? And
by the way, then it gets to the next level
where I'm like, they are they joking? Do they really
(21:35):
think it's going to accomplish what they think is going
to accomplish. We're dealing with an email right now. That
is something that I've been kind of doing. Slightly different
than doing it for how long? Dragons? Six months are longer?
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Now?
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
For sure? Yeah, for quite a while. And now all
of a sudden it's like, and you will be held
accountable for doing this? Oh well, that's that's certainly a
a pusive way to approach things. You shall be held
accountable if you don't do this.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Thanks for the support, Yeah, thanks for.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And of course it ends with, you know, an exclamation point.
Everybody's all happy and goes on. The first five pillars
of this remarketing strategic transformation plan would be refining and
then evolving the brand across all touch points. Oh my god,
was this written by a consultant. We're going to refine
the brand and then it's going to evolve the brand
(22:32):
across all touch points. Interestingly, Cedar Bagloria is a top
investor in Cracker Barrel. He gave four warnings that the
rebranding was obvious folly, and apparently did so with filings
(22:56):
with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He wrote an escathing
seven page letter to the shareholders that Cracker Barrel is
not a broken brand, but it has a broken board.
Call I'm an investor in a certain company, and I
kind of like to write that kind of letter, but
(23:17):
I'm sure that there would be ramifications that I wouldn't like.
Then he put together, I love this kind of investor,
although he's kind of tilting at windmills like most of
us are when it comes to our employers or our
businesses that we'd have to deal with. He laid out
his criticism in a one hundred one hundred and twenty
(23:38):
page slide deck. So he goes on power Point and
put I assume PowerPoint maybe it was pages, I don't know,
and puts together one hundred and twenty page deck with
the title in all caps, Cracker Barrel is in crisis
next to the logo the old man in the overalls
on a barrel. Now, while the dynamics of company executives,
(24:03):
pursuing political correctness, woke woke, rebranding it. That's all well
documented the timeline of the last year and a half.
This just didn't happen overnight, which most people think because
it just hit the news that happened overnight. On the
call in May of last year, the CEO announced that
(24:24):
she had hired a new leading branding agency to refine
and strengthen positioning to delight existing and new guests. They
were going to enhance the menu, evolve the storing guest experience,
winning in the digital and off premise categories, and elevating
(24:45):
the employee experience. Dragon I can attest that we've heard
this kind of stuff here. We've heard exactly this kind
of stuff. I mean, I know in your company you've
heard exactly the same thing. Hey, we're going a new direction,
or we're going to try something new. And if you've
been with the company long enough, you know that when
they try something new, you're going, wait a minute, we
(25:08):
did that five years ago, ten years ago. That's right,
we did five years ago, ten years ago. Corporate America
is just absolutely eft. I mean, it's it's amazing to me.
Now other investors also didn't react well to the news
because the very next day, I'm not talking about the
recent slide. I'm talking about May of twenty twenty four.
(25:31):
The very next day the share price fell to forty
eight dollars ninety eight cents. So I was curious, who
is this shareholder? But Glory. He was born in Tehran
in nineteen seventy seven. He fled to San Antonio with
his family after the Iyatola company came to power Comane,
(25:53):
no comane came to power working at it Working. First
they had a Persian carpet store. He built a business
as a teenager. Then in his twenties he started an
investment firm, Baguary Holdings. It now trades on the New
York Stock Exchange, and he invests in a series of
(26:14):
all American restaurant brands, Western Sisling, Friendlies, Steak and Shake,
and Cracker Barrel now a series of Cracker Barrel boards.
And senior executives dismiss him as a wayward activist investor
and that he has suspect ultimate agenda, and that is
so his criticism, you know, fell in deaf ears. He
(26:37):
has a reputation of being a bully and an evil
genius with a type X personality and he's driven by money.
Why would think that would be the kind of shaholder
you would want? You would want a shareholder, an activist
shareholder that is driven by the company's bottom line. Cracker
Barrel responded to this singular investor with their All with
(26:59):
Us separate web page devoted to investors. So they went
right ahead hired a new marketing chief marketing officer in
July of last year. She came from MGM Resorts, doubling
down on expensive story modelings and refreshes, and in the
last year's annual report included a diversity, Equity and Inclusions section.
(27:23):
They featured seven business resource groups for promoting diverse members,
black leaders, Hispanic, Latino culture, LGBTQ, plus awareness, military veterans,
and women leaders. Kind of scary. In the report, these
same executives were warning that the failure to achieve or
sustain their strategic transformation plan with this rebranding quote could
(27:48):
adversely affect our results. Now, I'm just telling you a
lawyer made them put that in there. A lawyer that
reviewed their SEC filings said, we've got a some sort
of disclaimer in here because we're going off in a
different direction. But I also guaranted them to you that
there were people on the board, there were people within
(28:09):
the the C suite that were thinking to themselves, you
think this is really gonna work. People were probably pretty
nervous about it. You're taking a well known you know what,
this is new coke, new coke, this is Coca Cola
doing new coke. Let you know, let let's go do
something new. And you get group think going, and everybody
(28:30):
starts thinking the same way, and boom, you're off. You're
off to the races. Well by By October eighth of
last year, on Tamer's birthday, this activist investor had had enough.
He sent a seven page letter to the shareholders warning
them about the obvious folly green lighting Mesino and her
(28:51):
transformation plan, criticizing the board's dysfunction and mismanagement, and concluded
that Cracker Barrel is in perilous times. And he laid
out the numbers. All right, this story fascinates me, yes,
because of everything we're going to talk about in terms
of the politics of it. But when you dig into
(29:12):
the business side of it, holy cow. The warning signs
that you know, remember the old bubblegum machine that get
put on top of a cop car. You know it
would swirl around, you know with the red light. Well,
that was going off internally in this company, and nobody
was paying any attention to it. Jimminy Christmas. In twenty eleven,
(29:35):
Cracker barrels one hundred and sixty seven million dollars in
operating income on two point four billion dollars in revenues.
By twenty twenty three, one point four billion in cumulative
capital expenditures, Operating income had fallen to one hundred twenty
one million dollars, even as the revenues went past three
(29:56):
point four billion dollars. He wrote in his letter, the
problem lies not in the seating, but it getting more
people to sit in the seats. We do not believe
changing the furniture and altering the decor or going to
change the company's trajectory or solve the company's underlying problem
of declining traffic. Do you ever stop and think that
(30:17):
maybe the product that you're producing that people are getting
tired of the product. And by the product, I don't
mean it's necessarily mean the chicken fried steak, or even
the store or the and by the store, I mean
the place where you go buy all that crap, but
that maybe you need to update it, or maybe the
(30:39):
menu has you know, you know, your chicken fried steak's
not nearly as good as it used to be because
you're trying to cut costs, you're trying to cut corners,
and you're doing it all in the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Hey, Michael, you really should step it up for lunch
today and try a cut up hot dog.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah. I might do that. Yeah, some roller food from
on the quick trip hot dog with mustard. Not catchup
by the way, you know, radio is so frustrating now,
Gouber number eighty three fifteen. I'm not picking on you,
but I am going to use you as an example.
(31:17):
I started out this discussion because to me, this is
a fascinating business discussion about Cracker Barrel. And I started
out the very probably the very first thing I said,
was something to the effect that, Dragan, don't you think
that maybe this whole Cracker Barrel rebranding and then the
apology was a big just all planned that it was
(31:40):
a way to get in the news, you know, by Hey,
let's let's say we're going to rebrand and do all
of this and then let's back off and apologize. I
know they've apologized, that's the other half of the story.
But most people, in fact, I would venture to say,
including you eighty three fifteen, did not know about the
(32:04):
activist investor and that this started way back in twenty
twenty four, which is why I made the joke about
do you think this was all planned? Because nobody in
the right mind would plan this kind of shareholder destruction
of losing you know, one hundred million dollars in value
or whatever it was in your share price and then
going oopsie, never mind, We're gonna come back. But it
(32:27):
shows the stupidity of corporate America, and I think to
be a little I gotta be careful how I say this.
I think some of the people, as I look over
my shoulder, whether that be millennials or gen Z or
gen Xer's failed to have the kind of life experiences
(32:51):
or have been brought up in such a coddled way
that they think they've got the answer to everything, and
not recking that Boomers, Millennials, we've got all the wealth,
weet all the money. We're the ones that right now
we may be doing a lot of consuming in terms
(33:11):
of buying stuff, but we eat out of luck and
we travel and we spend money and don't be feeding
and shoving down out throw of a bunch of Dei crap.
Now the apology, Yeah, that's next.
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