September 12, 2025 • 38 mins
Why do conservative brands go woke? To find the answer, we tell the story of Cracker Barrel. Many have argued that the Southern-themed restaurant chain and gift store has bent the knee to the woke mob. But a deeper dive into the history of the conservative brand tells a much different story.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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(00:25):
on with the show. It's become common for a large
corporation to go woke, whether it be Target, Disney or Starbucks.
People hardly bat and eye when these companies slap on
the rainbow motif. But what catches Middle America by surprise
is when a conservative brand plants the woke flag.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tick fil A is going woke. Major League Baseball is
you know, American is apple pie America's favorite pastime.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
They're going to dress up their players in pride flags.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
NASCAR has gone down the route of identity politics. They
have gone woke.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
The NHL wants to be more inclusive to the LGBT community.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
There's some logic behind a liberal brand going woke, but
a conservative company, why would they? Why do conservative brands
go woke? I'm Patrick Carelci.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
And I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Stories.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
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Speaker 1 (01:36):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. Why do conservative brands go woke? To
(01:59):
find the answer? We tell this story of Cracker Barrel.
Many have argued that the Southern themed restaurant chain and
gift store has bent the knee to the woke mob,
but a deeper dive into the history of the conservative
brand tells a much different story.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
It was May twenty twenty four, and with the presidential
election on the horizon, a beloved conservative brand made a
quiet announcement.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Major changes are coming to Cracker Barrel, as the food
chain CEO says, the company's brand isn't relevant and has
lost it shine.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
The company was in deep trouble since the COVID pandemic.
Their older clientele had pulled back on dining out. The
casual dining and gift shop chain needed to reach a
younger audience, but even after adding alcohol to the menu,
young diners weren't showing up. To add to their woes,
inflation was driving up the cost of food prices. As
(02:51):
a result, sales were flat some years and dropping others,
and Wall Street was taking notice. Cracker Barrel stock had
plummeted from an all time high of nearly one hundred
and eighty dollars a share in twenty nineteen to an
all time low of thirty six dollars just four years later.
With their stock and freefall, sales stagnant and a clientele
that was aging out, Cracker Barrel needed to do something,
(03:14):
and do it fast.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Now, Cracker Barrel is planning to fully transform under a
new strategic transformation plan, the restaurant plans to upgrade its menu,
change its prices, remodel its locations, and focus on country
store merchandise.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
The company's new CEO, Julie Messino, took to Wall Street's
home channel, CNBC, hoping to soothe the ditters of the market.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
Our goal is to take what people love about Cracker
Barrel and open the aperture a little bit so that
more people love Cracker Barrel, so we want to appeal
to all generations.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
At Messino's direction, the company performed market research and learned
that lighter, brighter stores could be an improvement. They also
decided to try a sleeker look at a few of
their locations. Messino would later explain their plan.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
We're adding in booths, making the chairs more comfortable, putting
a new life, brightening up the pink color. But what's
important is things that people love about Cracker Barrel. The
soul of Cracker Barrel's not changing. The rocking chairs are
still there, the fireplace is there at the peg game,
all the things that make Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel, the
vintage decor, it's still there and it's working. The results
affirm that we're headed in the right direction.
Speaker 9 (04:20):
The company says only thirty of its six hundred and
sixty stores are getting the full makeover.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
According to the CEO, the feedback was largely positive. Its
brand refresh seemed to be going well. That is until
mid August twenty twenty five, when Cracker Barrel unveiled its
new logo.
Speaker 9 (04:37):
Cracker Barrel is known for its comfort, from its food
to its country charm, many finding in a throwback to
a simpler time. But this morning, the company making another
effort to look forward, unveiling a new logo that's causing
a stir for loyal fans of the beloved southern chain.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Is that it?
Speaker 10 (04:54):
I think that's it?
Speaker 11 (04:55):
Well, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Cracker Barrel's longtime lif included an old timer sitting next
to a barrel, but presumably in its attempt to appeal
to a younger audience, the new, refreshed logo removed both
the old timer and the barrel.
Speaker 11 (05:13):
Since nineteen seventy seven, the country theme changed trademark featured
an image of a man resting by a barrel until
last week, when Cracker Barrel unveiled a new design. That
is a name only with a modernized type face.
Speaker 10 (05:26):
That's the answer to your question. That's it.
Speaker 11 (05:29):
The brand is keeping the golden brown collars at least.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Uh, that's interesting.
Speaker 12 (05:34):
It's a modern Cracker Barrel race who wants that?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
The old Timer may have been removed from the brand's logo,
but the company promised he'd still be featured in the
restaurants and on the menu. Two outsiders, It seemed like
a simple attempt at attracting new customers. But in a
surprising twist, instead of seeing the new redesign is just
a bid to save the brand, some began claiming the
(06:00):
move had other motivations.
Speaker 9 (06:02):
Now it's even sparking political backlash, some calling the redesign woke,
drawing critics like the President's son.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
The logo redesign started to trend, and conservative social media
influencers saw an opportunity.
Speaker 13 (06:15):
Look at this.
Speaker 9 (06:16):
Cracker Barrel launches their woke rebrand and the stock creators.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Cracker Barrel is now under fire. Why what did Cracker
Barrel do?
Speaker 14 (06:24):
Well?
Speaker 6 (06:25):
They changed their logo.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
It's a bad mood. It's a very bad mood.
Speaker 15 (06:28):
I go into Bracker Barrel to go from twenty twenty
five to nineteen fourteen, I ain't never ask.
Speaker 6 (06:33):
What is Conservative influencers were branding a logo, redesign and
restaurant makeover as woke, but was it well on paper,
not exactly. Woke is a Marxist victimhood ideology. It places
the needs and desires of so called a press groups
above all others. When companies go woke, they are publicly
consumed by progressive identity politics and LGBTQ plus inclusion in
(06:58):
their organization diversity Trump's meritocracy. Sometimes the company will even
move into censoring the groups viewed as the oppressor. Essentially,
going woke means letting a victimhood ideology take a front
and center position in the organization.
Speaker 16 (07:13):
But in the case of.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
Cracker Barrel's branding refresh, none of this was the case.
Perhaps the company's approach was off brand, maybe even to corporate.
But if desperately trying to attract a new audience is
going woke, then everything is woke and nothing is woke. Nevertheless,
conservative influencers like Matt Walsh saw wokeness in Cracker Barrel's
brand refresh.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I've heard a number of conservatives say that the rebrand
isn't woke, but it's kind of silly to call it woke.
Wokeness is the act of destruction itself. It's the emptying
of the thing. It's the hollowing out of something, making
something intentionally uglier.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
Is that that is walkness.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
It seemed Walsh was trying to change the definition of
wokeness to fit his argument. Modernizing a logo is not woke.
The argument was falling flat. But that's when Robbie Starbuck
entered the scene.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
We investigated Cracker Barrel, and what I'm about to show
you is a company infested with left wing activists who
are more interested in safe spaces, pronouns, and virtue signaling
than they are in their customers.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
The activist found instances of Cracker Barrel sponsoring a Pride
festival in Nashville, Tennessee, and Evansville, Indiana.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yes, Cracker Barrel is a proud sponsor of Nashville Pride
and have been part of it for over a decade,
along with participating for multiple years in Evansville, Indiana's Third
River City Pride event.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
His facts were wrong, but he did find instances of
Cracker Barrel imbuing their signature rocking chairs with rainbow colors.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
They even made LGBTQ plus rocking chairs for these Pride events.
This same Pride rocking chair that they put front and
center in their Tennessee corporate office and at their twenty
nineteen managers conference. For the Cracker Barrel managers.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Robbie Starbuck had the goods or did he did? The
Cracker Barrel rebrand signal a broader woke ideology at the company.
In context, the answer is much more nuanced than conservative
influencers would have you believe. The story behind cracker Barrels
LGBTQ activities reveals the reason why some conservative brands dip
(09:17):
their toes into wokeness, and at the same time puts
on full display how conservative influencers choose clickbait over telling
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health benefits come alive. Welcome back to red pilled America.
In the wake of World War II, the baby boom
(11:30):
kicked off. New American families took to the road, but
the problem was the country's infrastructure was outdated. So to
fix America's infrastructure problem, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid
Highway Act of nineteen fifty six that would eventually create
the US Interstate Highway System. As with any new development
(11:50):
that interconnects humans, opportunities arose. Road trips brought gas stations
to the new Interstate Highway. By the late nineteen sixties,
a young man named Dana Evans was in the perfect
position to see another opportunity. A Tennessee native, Evans worked
at the family's oil company as a jobber, which was
(12:11):
a middleman between gasoline refiners and gas stations. He saw
the money flowing into these interstate gas stations and wanted
to open one himself. But how could he differentiate his station.
He came up with an idea. Stations were popping up
everywhere along the interstate, but none were family friendly rest stops,
(12:33):
a place where people could stretch their legs, maybe pick
up some souvenirs, and grab a down home meal at
a fair price. Evans was reminded of the days of
his youth when locals gathered at an old country store
to not just grab necessities, but build community as well.
These stores were places where locals swapped news and gossiped
(12:53):
around a big wooden barrel filled with crackers. Evans wanted
to build a gas station that recreated these classic country stores,
with a potbelly stove and fire place inside, checkerboards on
every table, and rocking chairs on the store's front porch.
So in nineteen sixty nine, he took out a forty
thousand dollars loan to bring his idea to life, a
(13:14):
gas station right on the Interstate Highway with a gift
shop and restaurant serving down home meals. He turned to
an old school buddy named Tommy Lowe, who owned a
construction company. The two went into business together, building evans
concept in Lebanon, Tennessee, just off Interstate forty. He called
it Cracker Barrel after the big wooden barrels filled with
(13:34):
crackers that people would gather around. While other roadside businesses
went for a more modern look, Evans embraced nostalgia. Cracker
Barrel was an immediate success, turning a profit in the
first month. Evans was off and running. Within five years,
there were ten locations, all near interstate highways. The old
country store and restaurant side of the business was booming.
(13:57):
People loved the eggs with grits, buttermilk, pancakes, biscuits and gravy,
and all the fixens served with that old Southern hospitality,
and those feeling really ambitious could grab a rag doll
quilt or even a rocking chair in the gift store
on the way out. By the mid nineteen seventies, the
restaurant and gift store were such a success that Evans
dropped the gas stations altogether. In nineteen seventy seven, a
(14:21):
new logo was introduced. The original logo was just plain text.
The newmark featured an old timer with overalls sitting next
to a cracker barrel. That same year, the company was
operating about a dozen locations, but Evans wanted to expand faster,
so in nineteen eighty one, the company went public. The
offering was a major success, and by the close of
(14:43):
the decade, there were nearly one hundred cracker barrels in
operation all across the Southeast people couldn't get enough of
that home away from home southern vibe. Cracker Barrel was
a traditional America success story, but then the company inadvertently
started a feud that would last for decades.
Speaker 6 (15:01):
Around the close of nineteen ninety, Cracker Barrel was receiving
some complaints from their rural customers. They're gripe. They didn't
like the effeminate men serving their family meals. Several stores
of their nearly one hundred restaurants had gay men as waiters,
and they made some customers feel uncomfortable. By modern standards,
the complaint may sound unreasonable, even bigoted, but at the
(15:24):
time the country was in the midst of a decade
long crisis.
Speaker 17 (15:33):
Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Atlanta
Today released the results of a study which shows that
the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic
of a rare form of cancer.
Speaker 18 (15:46):
The condition severely weakens the body's ability to fight disease.
Many victims get a rare form of cancer called Kaposi sarcoma.
Others get an infection known as numocistus pneumonia. Researchers know
of four hundred and thirteen people who have contracted the
condition in the past year. One third have died and
none have been cured.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
In the early days of the AIDS crisis, it was
clear that the disease was largely isolated to specific segments
of the population.
Speaker 19 (16:13):
A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become
an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine. Topping
the list of likely victims are male homosexuals who have
many partners and drug users who inject themselves with needles.
Speaker 18 (16:27):
Investigators have examined the habits of homosexuals for CRUs.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
I was in the fasclining at one time in terms
of the way that I lived my life, and now
I'm not.
Speaker 20 (16:36):
Some doctors believe that fifty percent of the gay population
is walking around with the AIDS virus. It was the
wanton social life of the nineteen seventies which led directly
to this crisis. Estimates of seventy different sexual partners then
for one man, in less than a week.
Speaker 21 (16:52):
I was going out and meeting people and trying to
find a lover and making love to people who interested me.
I didn't know that, you know, that there were things
out there so secretly hidden that it was going to
destroy my life.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
As news of the disease spread, the numbers revealed by
medical experts were staggering.
Speaker 22 (17:10):
A study of the gay population in New York came
up with some horrifying figures.
Speaker 23 (17:14):
And they found that as many as eighty five percent
of otherwise healthy gay men showed evidence of imbalance in
these tests of the immune system.
Speaker 22 (17:24):
It hit me one week, actually, you know it's friend
Number eighteen died.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Gay activists began to accuse the government of slow walking
a response to the disease because it primarily impacted homosexual
men and intravenous drug users, segments of the population that
were then considered fringe. But it wasn't long before the
media began to pump the message that the disease was
beginning to impact the heterosexual population as well, including America's
(17:51):
most vulnerable.
Speaker 18 (17:53):
The eighth story took a new turn when at the
San Francisco Hospital, a twenty month old baby was found
to have the syndrome.
Speaker 24 (18:00):
We are faced with an epidemic which started in gay community,
but now we see it spreading into heterosexual but men
and women, So it's not really a gay related disease.
It is an infectious agent, most likely spreading through the community.
Speaker 22 (18:17):
Do you suspect that it's possible that this disease could
be spreading from the gay population in San Francisco to
non gays in San Francisco and thence on to other cities.
Speaker 23 (18:27):
I suspect it it is spreading, and I suspect it
will continue to spread to other areas of the country.
Speaker 22 (18:34):
This is not a benign disease, nor is it limited
to gays, as we are now finding out. So far,
seventy five percent of cases are homosexuals, but fourteen percent
are heterosexual drug addicts, five percent are non drug using
heterosexuals with no other risk factors, five percent are Haitian refugees,
and one percent are hemophiliacs who presumably caught it from
(18:55):
blood transfusions.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
A July nineteen eighty five issue of Life magazine ran
with the.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Headline, now no one is safe maids, but.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Later studies revealed that these proclamations were wrong. Many of
the heterosexual cases of AIDS that were not intravenious drug
users or hemophiliacs were later found to have contact with
high risk communities. Some had sex with intravenious drug users
or bisexual men. By the late nineteen eighties, scientific understanding
(19:24):
solidified that heterosexual transmission was biologically possible, but exceedingly rare. Nevertheless,
media coverage and public perception often magnified the threat to
heterosexuals beyond what epidemiological data supported. The dramatic headlines may
have increased funding and public awareness, but also exaggerated the risk,
(19:45):
sometimes with deliberate misinformation. As the nineteen nineties arrived, the
issue became divisive and Middle America didn't want the disease
spreading to their neck of the woods.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
Days are being called a dangerous and violent group that
corrupts children and infects the community with aids.
Speaker 16 (20:03):
The gay people are giving their blood knowing that it
is contaminating people, and to me, that is irresponsible and
a moral.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
So when Cracker Barrel's Middle America customers began complaining about
homosexuals cooking and serving their food, the company felt the
pressure to respond, and when they did, it would unleash
a feud that lasted for decades. Do you want to
hear red Pilled America stories? Ad free? Then become a
backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America dot com and
(20:33):
click join in the topmenu. Join today and help us
save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Welcome back to red Pilled America. So in the wake
of the AIDS crisis, Cracker Barrel's Middle America customers began
complaining about homosexuals cooking and serving their food. The company
felt the pressure to respond, and in January nineteen ninety one,
Cracker Barrel issued a new employment policy.
Speaker 25 (21:00):
My sister worked there, and my sister law.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
That's Cheryl Somerville at the time. In nineteen ninety one,
Cheryl was a cook at Cracker Barrel in Georgia. Several
of her family members also worked for the restaurant chain.
Speaker 25 (21:14):
They called me and they said, Cheryl, you're not going
to believe this. They have a new policy and they're
reading this people. And I said, well, what is it.
They're for firing people forbidding guys.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The policy stated that Cracker Barrel was a family restaurant
founded on traditional American principles. It went on to state
that it would no longer employ individuals whose sexual preference
failed to demonstrate normal heterosexual values. Cheryl Somerville had worked
as a cook at Cracker Barrel for several years.
Speaker 25 (21:42):
I worked in the kitchen. I was a cook and
Crackerbrell's food is all made from scratch bash partite as
you peel them. That was actually my job. I did
all the cooking that had everything except the grill cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
At the time, she claimed that one of her lower
restaurant managers, a guy named Mike, knew she was a lesbian,
so she asked.
Speaker 25 (22:02):
Him one to fire me, and they said no, that
they work could not do it. And I said, Mike,
it's going to catch up to me sooner or later.
If we're going to do it, you know, let's get
it over with. I don't want something hanging over my head.
And he then told me that he thought they were
targeting the effeminate men out on the floor. He said,
then if it applies to them, an applas Tom. Now,
(22:22):
if you got a fireman, I said, because you know,
I'm a lesbian.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Her boss called in the head manager, and once Cheryl
admitted to being a lesbian, he said he had to
let her go. Her termination letter said she was fired
for being gay. Cheryl thought Cracker Barrel was breaking the law,
so she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU,
hoping they could help.
Speaker 12 (22:43):
And they said they were sorry. There was nothing they
could do because it wasn't against the law.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
At the time, there was no Georgia law or federal
law that prevented someone from being fired for being gay.
What Cracker Barrel had done was completely legal, So Cheryl
decided to take a different route. She connected with the
Atlanta chapter of a gay activist organization called Queer Nation.
Speaker 25 (23:09):
They decided to have a protest in two weeks and
asked me if I would attend it, and it would
be the first protest of my entire life. And I
told him that I would be there, but I had
no idea. When I showed up that day, you know
what to expect why.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
The group employed many of the same tactics of the
civil rights movement. It picketed outside of Georgia Cracker Barrel,
harassing customers as they entered.
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Hey, get out my goddamn way.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Some Cracker Barrel customers spoke out in support of the
restaurant chain.
Speaker 25 (23:45):
I tell that it's God's way for a man to
beaus the house would be married to one more of.
Speaker 16 (23:50):
Them men and men, aren't That's not a family, the
values of our society that they are changing, and because
they are changing doesn't necessarily make it changes, right. I
believe an organization has the right to hire and fire
who they want to.
Speaker 26 (24:10):
I think Cracker Barrel is making up positive stand for
pro family, pro children, pro life, pro honesty, pro integrity,
and so I come here more often now because of
that policy.
Speaker 17 (24:23):
It's a family oriented in restaurant and we like that.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
But as the boycotts continued spreading to other locations, Cracker
Barrel rescinded their order firing gay workers. That wasn't enough.
The protesters wanted more, demanding the restaurant chain we hired
the dismissed employees. Cracker Barrel refused.
Speaker 27 (24:46):
Dan Evans, chairman of Cracker Barreugh, sent this letter saying, quote,
we are an equal opportunity employer. We hire and advance
our employees on the basis of their ability.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Now, the group says it has no other recourse except
to protest, because firing a person because of his or
her sexual preference is not against the law in the
state of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
That's when the protesters stepped it up a notch.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Very important that you realized that we're the ones that'll
be arrested.
Speaker 27 (25:12):
Will go first.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Gay activists entered Cracker Barrel restaurants at their busiest times
like Mother's Day, took up all the tables, ordered just
a cup of coffee, then sat there for three hours.
They were effectively doing sit ins to try and bankrupt
the restaurant. Now for criminals.
Speaker 21 (25:34):
More than a dozen kay rights activists are free on
bonds about it after they were arrested inside a Union
City Cracker Barrel restaurant.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
It wasn't long before the protests reached the national media.
Speaker 14 (25:45):
Can an employer dictate the sexual preferences of its workers?
That's the question being asked by several former employees of
the Cracker Barrel restaurants.
Speaker 11 (25:54):
One day they arrive at work and are told you
are fired.
Speaker 13 (25:57):
The reason because they're gay. If you go out to dinner,
wouldn't bother you if you're a waiter was homosexual.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The LGBTQ protests of Cracker Barrel sparked a national debate
over gays in the workplace.
Speaker 14 (26:09):
Welcome back to Larry King Live with Cheryl Somerville, New
York City.
Speaker 13 (26:12):
Hello, look at this woman. I mean it is obvious
to see she's a homosexual. It's obvious to see.
Speaker 14 (26:18):
Let's say that's obvious, caller. Why should she not be
a cook?
Speaker 13 (26:22):
Why should she not be a cook?
Speaker 14 (26:23):
Why should she not be She can be a.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
Cook as long as she does her job and does
not come out of the kitchen. But this is very
offensive to a family restaurant. Why a person should have
to go into a restaurant with their family and then
their children start to have a weird idea of what
men and women should be.
Speaker 27 (26:41):
Love us All, a group with a provocative name of
Queer Nation, rallied to support the fired workers.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Were day in and day out. The LGBTQ protesters were
pounding at Cracker Barrel and Cheryl Somerville became their rallying cry.
Speaker 25 (27:01):
It's great to look out from here and see so
many people, to note how much support has come behind
this whole thing over the last year. It's growed, and
it's growed, and to look at today, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
But through all the noise, Cracker Barrel thought they had
the law on their side. However, when it came time
for the arrested sit in protesters to face justice, the
restaurant chain learned that the law would not stop the protests.
Speaker 12 (27:24):
We were at trial for three days. We had a jury.
Trespassing is what the charge was. We all got on
the stand, we admitted, yes, we had trespassed, and we
explained why we had trespassed, and at the end of it,
the jury found us not guilty.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Before it was all over, more than two hundred organizations
joined the Cracker Barrel boycott. Progressive churches, labor unions, and
civil rights organizations hounded the company for years. Large pension
plans refused to purchase the company's stock, and this is
where protesters saw a way to extend the fight far
into the future, and gay activists started a national campaign
(28:12):
to buy Cracker Barrel stock. They launched a buy one
campaign where they bought one share of the stock so
they had a voice in its policies. Large institutional investors
like the New York City Comptroller's Office, which managed a
city pension fund with Cracker Barrel shares, joined in with
the activists, submitting a proposal demanding the company adopt a
(28:32):
non discrimination policy that included sexual orientation. They pounded away
every year for the next decade, but time after time
it got voted down. Then In two thousand and two,
they got a break. The Human Rights Campaign or HRC,
the largest LGBTQ plus civil rights advocacy group in the
(28:53):
United States, launched what they called the Corporate Equality Index CEI,
as it came to be known, is a tool that
scores companies based on their adoption of gender identity protections.
In August two thousand and two, the Human Rights Campaign
published its first annual CEI scoring, rating over three hundred
(29:15):
companies on their work towards gender equality. In their first survey,
they singled out Cracker Barrel by name in the opening
pages of the report, giving the company a score of zero.
The rating clearly left a mark, because, three months later,
after a decade plus battle with gay activist shareholders, Cracker
Barrel added sexual orientation to the company's non discrimination policy.
(29:39):
The gay activists won, but they were just getting started,
because you see, America was going through a transition.
Speaker 15 (29:50):
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you're going to be
presented simple fact. Andrew Beckett was fired. You'll hear two
explanations for why he was fired. Ours and theirs. His
employers discovered his illness, and Ladies and gentlemen, the illness.
(30:14):
I'm referring to his AIDS. They panicked, and in their
panic they did what most of us would like to
do with AIDS, which is just get it and everybody
who has it as far away from the rest of
us as possible.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Films like Philadelphia and The Birdcage, and TV shows like Ellen,
Will and Grace, Six Feet Under and The L Word
were all bringing the LGBTQ lifestyle into the mainstream. Hollywood
was shifting culture, and Wall Street followed. Corporate rating tools
like CEI were being used as weapons to control company policy.
(30:49):
Institutional investors began refusing to purchase stocks of a company
that didn't score high in the way they handled climate change, diversity,
and gender equality. If you didn't make an attempt to
score well in the CEI report, your company would not
only be locked out of billions of dollars of investment capital,
you faced being sued into oblivion by disgruntled gay employees
(31:10):
and attacked by this same gay activists and national media
that had been trying to destroy Cracker Barrel for over
a decade.
Speaker 15 (31:18):
So the Old.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Country Store began to cooperate. They started off slowly. In
two thousand and six, CEI gave them a score of fifteen.
Four years later it jumped to fifty five. None of
their efforts were happening in their restaurants or gift shops.
It was all employee based. To counter the homophobic claims
that went back to nineteen ninety one, then the Human
(31:39):
Rights Campaign began changing their CEI scoring system, upping the ante.
Aside from being judged on workplace equality, they added points
for public support, like sponsoring a Pride parade. This section
gave the highest scoring in their rating system. What the
HRC was creating was a protection racket. If you paid,
(31:59):
they wouldn't attack. Cracker Barrel knew its customers would vehemently
reject rainbow representation in their restaurants, so they decided to
stay focused on employee equality. They supported an employee led
gay group called the lgbt Alliance, and through that group
they sponsored employee involvement in the twenty seventeen Nashville Pride Festival,
(32:20):
as well as a few LGBTQ events in other markets.
As Biden re entered the White House, Cracker Barrel's corporate
LGBTQ employee initiative made it to their website. They added
a diversity and inclusion page that stated quote.
Speaker 7 (32:34):
In twenty twenty one, Cracker barrel scored eighty on the
Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, which is the
national benchmarking tool measuring policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
and queer employees and as a primary driving force for
LGBTQ workplace inclusion.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
But aside from an image posted of a rainbow rocking
chair at one of their restaurants, their LGBTQ efforts were
almost entirely out of the site of their traditional customer.
They were payments to a protection racket so they wouldn't
be attacked by the LGBTQ activists. But then Cracker Barrel
started to change course. In the twenty twenty three version
(33:22):
of the CEI ranking, the Human Rights Campaign added new
criteria to their scoring. They wanted companies to provide health
insurance that funded gender transitions. Cracker Barrel refused to comply
with these new criteria. Their CEI score plummeted to thirty. Then,
at the end of twenty twenty four, just as Cracker
Barrel launched its brand refresh campaign, they removed the pride
(33:45):
page from their website. The only thing remaining was a
small blurb that mentioned their support of their gay employees.
And perhaps most noteworthy, when June twenty twenty five arrived,
Cracker Barrel dropped their sponsorship of the Nashville Pride Festival.
In other words, when Cracker Barrel launched their brand refresh,
they were also distancing themselves from the woke community. They
(34:06):
were coming back home to their traditional American principles. But
you wouldn't know that from listening to activists like Robbie Starbuck.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
So let's start with Nashville Pride. Yes, Cracker Barrel is
a proud sponsor of Nashville Pride, but their own website
says quote this year, Cracker Barrel's focus was to be
a part of the Pride experience.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Both of those statements are false. Cracker Barrel had already
dropped their Nashville Pride sponsorship and removed the Pride experience
verbiage from their website. Conservative influencers were attacking Cracker Barrel
for things they'd already terminated. But the problem is sometimes
the whole truth is not good clickbait. It looks really
(34:46):
really really cool. Yeah, these are chairs you can buy
right here. Adriana and I recently visited a Cracker Barrel
for the first time in the heart of southern California.
I want to kitten, if the brand was woke, this
would not have been the place to hide.
Speaker 16 (35:01):
It being answer, okay, what are we doing?
Speaker 13 (35:06):
Is this?
Speaker 6 (35:06):
It is this the one person game.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We saw no indication of a company that had gone woke.
What we did see was the restaurant version of a
serviceman returning home from the Vietnam War. Cracker Barrel felt
like a battered culture warrior, not given the respect that
it deserves or so desperately needs, which leads us back
(35:46):
to the question why do conservative brands go woke? The
answer is culture pushes them towards protection rackets. Hollywood, the
legacy media, music, literature, the storytelling industry has been injecting
wokeness into the America and bloodstream for decades, and as
Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream of culture. If
(36:09):
the Right continues to shun the thing that defines American culture,
conservative brands will be forced to pay the woke protection
racket just to stay alive. There is perhaps no corporate
brand that has fought longer to represent traditional America than
Cracker Barrel. It went to war with the power center
of the woke mob before woke was even a thing,
battling with the LGBTQ community for decades, but ultimately much
(36:33):
of their traditional clientele abandoned the brand. Their design refresh
wasn't wokeness. They started rejecting the Wolke protection racket at
the same time they introduced a brand refresh. But conservative
influencers have become addicted to outrage clickbait. They've resorted to
bending the truth while spitting on the culture warrior that
was coming home from a long battle. Could Cracker Barrel
(36:56):
have made a better brand refresh decision? Sure, But if
we're going to toss culture warriors like Cracker Barrel to
the wolves for trying to turn around their business, and
maybe conservative influencers need to start looking harder in the mirror.
Speaker 10 (37:09):
Most of you know, my brilliant son Spencer's gaye. A
little bit bit of gay is in your soup and
it makes me taste better. And I basically believe that
people should be left alone and you should concentrate on
your own sins. If indeed that is a sin.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
Red pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures. Now, you can get ad free access to
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(00:25):
on with the show. It's become common for a large
corporation to go woke, whether it be Target, Disney or Starbucks.
People hardly bat and eye when these companies slap on
the rainbow motif. But what catches Middle America by surprise
is when a conservative brand plants the woke flag.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tick fil A is going woke. Major League Baseball is
you know, American is apple pie America's favorite pastime.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
They're going to dress up their players in pride flags.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
NASCAR has gone down the route of identity politics. They
have gone woke.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
The NHL wants to be more inclusive to the LGBT community.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
There's some logic behind a liberal brand going woke, but
a conservative company, why would they? Why do conservative brands
go woke? I'm Patrick Carelci.
Speaker 6 (01:16):
And I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 7 (01:28):
Stories.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 6 (01:31):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the Globalist Ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pilled America. Why do conservative brands go woke? To
(01:59):
find the answer? We tell this story of Cracker Barrel.
Many have argued that the Southern themed restaurant chain and
gift store has bent the knee to the woke mob,
but a deeper dive into the history of the conservative
brand tells a much different story.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
It was May twenty twenty four, and with the presidential
election on the horizon, a beloved conservative brand made a
quiet announcement.
Speaker 5 (02:22):
Major changes are coming to Cracker Barrel, as the food
chain CEO says, the company's brand isn't relevant and has
lost it shine.
Speaker 6 (02:30):
The company was in deep trouble since the COVID pandemic.
Their older clientele had pulled back on dining out. The
casual dining and gift shop chain needed to reach a
younger audience, but even after adding alcohol to the menu,
young diners weren't showing up. To add to their woes,
inflation was driving up the cost of food prices. As
(02:51):
a result, sales were flat some years and dropping others,
and Wall Street was taking notice. Cracker Barrel stock had
plummeted from an all time high of nearly one hundred
and eighty dollars a share in twenty nineteen to an
all time low of thirty six dollars just four years later.
With their stock and freefall, sales stagnant and a clientele
that was aging out, Cracker Barrel needed to do something,
(03:14):
and do it fast.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Now, Cracker Barrel is planning to fully transform under a
new strategic transformation plan, the restaurant plans to upgrade its menu,
change its prices, remodel its locations, and focus on country
store merchandise.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
The company's new CEO, Julie Messino, took to Wall Street's
home channel, CNBC, hoping to soothe the ditters of the market.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
Our goal is to take what people love about Cracker
Barrel and open the aperture a little bit so that
more people love Cracker Barrel, so we want to appeal
to all generations.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
At Messino's direction, the company performed market research and learned
that lighter, brighter stores could be an improvement. They also
decided to try a sleeker look at a few of
their locations. Messino would later explain their plan.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
We're adding in booths, making the chairs more comfortable, putting
a new life, brightening up the pink color. But what's
important is things that people love about Cracker Barrel. The
soul of Cracker Barrel's not changing. The rocking chairs are
still there, the fireplace is there at the peg game,
all the things that make Cracker Barrel Cracker Barrel, the
vintage decor, it's still there and it's working. The results
affirm that we're headed in the right direction.
Speaker 9 (04:20):
The company says only thirty of its six hundred and
sixty stores are getting the full makeover.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
According to the CEO, the feedback was largely positive. Its
brand refresh seemed to be going well. That is until
mid August twenty twenty five, when Cracker Barrel unveiled its
new logo.
Speaker 9 (04:37):
Cracker Barrel is known for its comfort, from its food
to its country charm, many finding in a throwback to
a simpler time. But this morning, the company making another
effort to look forward, unveiling a new logo that's causing
a stir for loyal fans of the beloved southern chain.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Is that it?
Speaker 10 (04:54):
I think that's it?
Speaker 11 (04:55):
Well, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Cracker Barrel's longtime lif included an old timer sitting next
to a barrel, but presumably in its attempt to appeal
to a younger audience, the new, refreshed logo removed both
the old timer and the barrel.
Speaker 11 (05:13):
Since nineteen seventy seven, the country theme changed trademark featured
an image of a man resting by a barrel until
last week, when Cracker Barrel unveiled a new design. That
is a name only with a modernized type face.
Speaker 10 (05:26):
That's the answer to your question. That's it.
Speaker 11 (05:29):
The brand is keeping the golden brown collars at least.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Uh, that's interesting.
Speaker 12 (05:34):
It's a modern Cracker Barrel race who wants that?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
The old Timer may have been removed from the brand's logo,
but the company promised he'd still be featured in the
restaurants and on the menu. Two outsiders, It seemed like
a simple attempt at attracting new customers. But in a
surprising twist, instead of seeing the new redesign is just
a bid to save the brand, some began claiming the
(06:00):
move had other motivations.
Speaker 9 (06:02):
Now it's even sparking political backlash, some calling the redesign woke,
drawing critics like the President's son.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
The logo redesign started to trend, and conservative social media
influencers saw an opportunity.
Speaker 13 (06:15):
Look at this.
Speaker 9 (06:16):
Cracker Barrel launches their woke rebrand and the stock creators.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Cracker Barrel is now under fire. Why what did Cracker
Barrel do?
Speaker 14 (06:24):
Well?
Speaker 6 (06:25):
They changed their logo.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
It's a bad mood. It's a very bad mood.
Speaker 15 (06:28):
I go into Bracker Barrel to go from twenty twenty
five to nineteen fourteen, I ain't never ask.
Speaker 6 (06:33):
What is Conservative influencers were branding a logo, redesign and
restaurant makeover as woke, but was it well on paper,
not exactly. Woke is a Marxist victimhood ideology. It places
the needs and desires of so called a press groups
above all others. When companies go woke, they are publicly
consumed by progressive identity politics and LGBTQ plus inclusion in
(06:58):
their organization diversity Trump's meritocracy. Sometimes the company will even
move into censoring the groups viewed as the oppressor. Essentially,
going woke means letting a victimhood ideology take a front
and center position in the organization.
Speaker 16 (07:13):
But in the case of.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
Cracker Barrel's branding refresh, none of this was the case.
Perhaps the company's approach was off brand, maybe even to corporate.
But if desperately trying to attract a new audience is
going woke, then everything is woke and nothing is woke. Nevertheless,
conservative influencers like Matt Walsh saw wokeness in Cracker Barrel's
brand refresh.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I've heard a number of conservatives say that the rebrand
isn't woke, but it's kind of silly to call it woke.
Wokeness is the act of destruction itself. It's the emptying
of the thing. It's the hollowing out of something, making
something intentionally uglier.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
Is that that is walkness.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
It seemed Walsh was trying to change the definition of
wokeness to fit his argument. Modernizing a logo is not woke.
The argument was falling flat. But that's when Robbie Starbuck
entered the scene.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
We investigated Cracker Barrel, and what I'm about to show
you is a company infested with left wing activists who
are more interested in safe spaces, pronouns, and virtue signaling
than they are in their customers.
Speaker 6 (08:17):
The activist found instances of Cracker Barrel sponsoring a Pride
festival in Nashville, Tennessee, and Evansville, Indiana.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yes, Cracker Barrel is a proud sponsor of Nashville Pride
and have been part of it for over a decade,
along with participating for multiple years in Evansville, Indiana's Third
River City Pride event.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
His facts were wrong, but he did find instances of
Cracker Barrel imbuing their signature rocking chairs with rainbow colors.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
They even made LGBTQ plus rocking chairs for these Pride events.
This same Pride rocking chair that they put front and
center in their Tennessee corporate office and at their twenty
nineteen managers conference. For the Cracker Barrel managers.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Robbie Starbuck had the goods or did he did? The
Cracker Barrel rebrand signal a broader woke ideology at the company.
In context, the answer is much more nuanced than conservative
influencers would have you believe. The story behind cracker Barrels
LGBTQ activities reveals the reason why some conservative brands dip
(09:17):
their toes into wokeness, and at the same time puts
on full display how conservative influencers choose clickbait over telling
the whole truth. I've got to tell you, my dog, Willow,
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(09:40):
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Speaker 1 (09:43):
You guys probably won't be surprised to hear this, but
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Speaker 6 (10:02):
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health benefits come alive. Welcome back to red pilled America.
In the wake of World War II, the baby boom
(11:30):
kicked off. New American families took to the road, but
the problem was the country's infrastructure was outdated. So to
fix America's infrastructure problem, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid
Highway Act of nineteen fifty six that would eventually create
the US Interstate Highway System. As with any new development
(11:50):
that interconnects humans, opportunities arose. Road trips brought gas stations
to the new Interstate Highway. By the late nineteen sixties,
a young man named Dana Evans was in the perfect
position to see another opportunity. A Tennessee native, Evans worked
at the family's oil company as a jobber, which was
(12:11):
a middleman between gasoline refiners and gas stations. He saw
the money flowing into these interstate gas stations and wanted
to open one himself. But how could he differentiate his station.
He came up with an idea. Stations were popping up
everywhere along the interstate, but none were family friendly rest stops,
(12:33):
a place where people could stretch their legs, maybe pick
up some souvenirs, and grab a down home meal at
a fair price. Evans was reminded of the days of
his youth when locals gathered at an old country store
to not just grab necessities, but build community as well.
These stores were places where locals swapped news and gossiped
(12:53):
around a big wooden barrel filled with crackers. Evans wanted
to build a gas station that recreated these classic country stores,
with a potbelly stove and fire place inside, checkerboards on
every table, and rocking chairs on the store's front porch.
So in nineteen sixty nine, he took out a forty
thousand dollars loan to bring his idea to life, a
(13:14):
gas station right on the Interstate Highway with a gift
shop and restaurant serving down home meals. He turned to
an old school buddy named Tommy Lowe, who owned a
construction company. The two went into business together, building evans
concept in Lebanon, Tennessee, just off Interstate forty. He called
it Cracker Barrel after the big wooden barrels filled with
(13:34):
crackers that people would gather around. While other roadside businesses
went for a more modern look, Evans embraced nostalgia. Cracker
Barrel was an immediate success, turning a profit in the
first month. Evans was off and running. Within five years,
there were ten locations, all near interstate highways. The old
country store and restaurant side of the business was booming.
(13:57):
People loved the eggs with grits, buttermilk, pancakes, biscuits and gravy,
and all the fixens served with that old Southern hospitality,
and those feeling really ambitious could grab a rag doll
quilt or even a rocking chair in the gift store
on the way out. By the mid nineteen seventies, the
restaurant and gift store were such a success that Evans
dropped the gas stations altogether. In nineteen seventy seven, a
(14:21):
new logo was introduced. The original logo was just plain text.
The newmark featured an old timer with overalls sitting next
to a cracker barrel. That same year, the company was
operating about a dozen locations, but Evans wanted to expand faster,
so in nineteen eighty one, the company went public. The
offering was a major success, and by the close of
(14:43):
the decade, there were nearly one hundred cracker barrels in
operation all across the Southeast people couldn't get enough of
that home away from home southern vibe. Cracker Barrel was
a traditional America success story, but then the company inadvertently
started a feud that would last for decades.
Speaker 6 (15:01):
Around the close of nineteen ninety, Cracker Barrel was receiving
some complaints from their rural customers. They're gripe. They didn't
like the effeminate men serving their family meals. Several stores
of their nearly one hundred restaurants had gay men as waiters,
and they made some customers feel uncomfortable. By modern standards,
the complaint may sound unreasonable, even bigoted, but at the
(15:24):
time the country was in the midst of a decade
long crisis.
Speaker 17 (15:33):
Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Atlanta
Today released the results of a study which shows that
the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic
of a rare form of cancer.
Speaker 18 (15:46):
The condition severely weakens the body's ability to fight disease.
Many victims get a rare form of cancer called Kaposi sarcoma.
Others get an infection known as numocistus pneumonia. Researchers know
of four hundred and thirteen people who have contracted the
condition in the past year. One third have died and
none have been cured.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
In the early days of the AIDS crisis, it was
clear that the disease was largely isolated to specific segments
of the population.
Speaker 19 (16:13):
A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become
an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine. Topping
the list of likely victims are male homosexuals who have
many partners and drug users who inject themselves with needles.
Speaker 18 (16:27):
Investigators have examined the habits of homosexuals for CRUs.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
I was in the fasclining at one time in terms
of the way that I lived my life, and now
I'm not.
Speaker 20 (16:36):
Some doctors believe that fifty percent of the gay population
is walking around with the AIDS virus. It was the
wanton social life of the nineteen seventies which led directly
to this crisis. Estimates of seventy different sexual partners then
for one man, in less than a week.
Speaker 21 (16:52):
I was going out and meeting people and trying to
find a lover and making love to people who interested me.
I didn't know that, you know, that there were things
out there so secretly hidden that it was going to
destroy my life.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
As news of the disease spread, the numbers revealed by
medical experts were staggering.
Speaker 22 (17:10):
A study of the gay population in New York came
up with some horrifying figures.
Speaker 23 (17:14):
And they found that as many as eighty five percent
of otherwise healthy gay men showed evidence of imbalance in
these tests of the immune system.
Speaker 22 (17:24):
It hit me one week, actually, you know it's friend
Number eighteen died.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Gay activists began to accuse the government of slow walking
a response to the disease because it primarily impacted homosexual
men and intravenous drug users, segments of the population that
were then considered fringe. But it wasn't long before the
media began to pump the message that the disease was
beginning to impact the heterosexual population as well, including America's
(17:51):
most vulnerable.
Speaker 18 (17:53):
The eighth story took a new turn when at the
San Francisco Hospital, a twenty month old baby was found
to have the syndrome.
Speaker 24 (18:00):
We are faced with an epidemic which started in gay community,
but now we see it spreading into heterosexual but men
and women, So it's not really a gay related disease.
It is an infectious agent, most likely spreading through the community.
Speaker 22 (18:17):
Do you suspect that it's possible that this disease could
be spreading from the gay population in San Francisco to
non gays in San Francisco and thence on to other cities.
Speaker 23 (18:27):
I suspect it it is spreading, and I suspect it
will continue to spread to other areas of the country.
Speaker 22 (18:34):
This is not a benign disease, nor is it limited
to gays, as we are now finding out. So far,
seventy five percent of cases are homosexuals, but fourteen percent
are heterosexual drug addicts, five percent are non drug using
heterosexuals with no other risk factors, five percent are Haitian refugees,
and one percent are hemophiliacs who presumably caught it from
(18:55):
blood transfusions.
Speaker 6 (18:56):
A July nineteen eighty five issue of Life magazine ran
with the.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Headline, now no one is safe maids, but.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
Later studies revealed that these proclamations were wrong. Many of
the heterosexual cases of AIDS that were not intravenious drug
users or hemophiliacs were later found to have contact with
high risk communities. Some had sex with intravenious drug users
or bisexual men. By the late nineteen eighties, scientific understanding
(19:24):
solidified that heterosexual transmission was biologically possible, but exceedingly rare. Nevertheless,
media coverage and public perception often magnified the threat to
heterosexuals beyond what epidemiological data supported. The dramatic headlines may
have increased funding and public awareness, but also exaggerated the risk,
(19:45):
sometimes with deliberate misinformation. As the nineteen nineties arrived, the
issue became divisive and Middle America didn't want the disease
spreading to their neck of the woods.
Speaker 9 (19:56):
Days are being called a dangerous and violent group that
corrupts children and infects the community with aids.
Speaker 16 (20:03):
The gay people are giving their blood knowing that it
is contaminating people, and to me, that is irresponsible and
a moral.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
So when Cracker Barrel's Middle America customers began complaining about
homosexuals cooking and serving their food, the company felt the
pressure to respond, and when they did, it would unleash
a feud that lasted for decades. Do you want to
hear red Pilled America stories? Ad free? Then become a
backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America dot com and
(20:33):
click join in the topmenu. Join today and help us
save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Welcome back to red Pilled America. So in the wake
of the AIDS crisis, Cracker Barrel's Middle America customers began
complaining about homosexuals cooking and serving their food. The company
felt the pressure to respond, and in January nineteen ninety one,
Cracker Barrel issued a new employment policy.
Speaker 25 (21:00):
My sister worked there, and my sister law.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
That's Cheryl Somerville at the time. In nineteen ninety one,
Cheryl was a cook at Cracker Barrel in Georgia. Several
of her family members also worked for the restaurant chain.
Speaker 25 (21:14):
They called me and they said, Cheryl, you're not going
to believe this. They have a new policy and they're
reading this people. And I said, well, what is it.
They're for firing people forbidding guys.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The policy stated that Cracker Barrel was a family restaurant
founded on traditional American principles. It went on to state
that it would no longer employ individuals whose sexual preference
failed to demonstrate normal heterosexual values. Cheryl Somerville had worked
as a cook at Cracker Barrel for several years.
Speaker 25 (21:42):
I worked in the kitchen. I was a cook and
Crackerbrell's food is all made from scratch bash partite as
you peel them. That was actually my job. I did
all the cooking that had everything except the grill cooking.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
At the time, she claimed that one of her lower
restaurant managers, a guy named Mike, knew she was a lesbian,
so she asked.
Speaker 25 (22:02):
Him one to fire me, and they said no, that
they work could not do it. And I said, Mike,
it's going to catch up to me sooner or later.
If we're going to do it, you know, let's get
it over with. I don't want something hanging over my head.
And he then told me that he thought they were
targeting the effeminate men out on the floor. He said,
then if it applies to them, an applas Tom. Now,
(22:22):
if you got a fireman, I said, because you know,
I'm a lesbian.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Her boss called in the head manager, and once Cheryl
admitted to being a lesbian, he said he had to
let her go. Her termination letter said she was fired
for being gay. Cheryl thought Cracker Barrel was breaking the law,
so she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU,
hoping they could help.
Speaker 12 (22:43):
And they said they were sorry. There was nothing they
could do because it wasn't against the law.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
At the time, there was no Georgia law or federal
law that prevented someone from being fired for being gay.
What Cracker Barrel had done was completely legal, So Cheryl
decided to take a different route. She connected with the
Atlanta chapter of a gay activist organization called Queer Nation.
Speaker 25 (23:09):
They decided to have a protest in two weeks and
asked me if I would attend it, and it would
be the first protest of my entire life. And I
told him that I would be there, but I had
no idea. When I showed up that day, you know
what to expect why.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
The group employed many of the same tactics of the
civil rights movement. It picketed outside of Georgia Cracker Barrel,
harassing customers as they entered.
Speaker 7 (23:35):
Hey, get out my goddamn way.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Some Cracker Barrel customers spoke out in support of the
restaurant chain.
Speaker 25 (23:45):
I tell that it's God's way for a man to
beaus the house would be married to one more of.
Speaker 16 (23:50):
Them men and men, aren't That's not a family, the
values of our society that they are changing, and because
they are changing doesn't necessarily make it changes, right. I
believe an organization has the right to hire and fire
who they want to.
Speaker 26 (24:10):
I think Cracker Barrel is making up positive stand for
pro family, pro children, pro life, pro honesty, pro integrity,
and so I come here more often now because of
that policy.
Speaker 17 (24:23):
It's a family oriented in restaurant and we like that.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
But as the boycotts continued spreading to other locations, Cracker
Barrel rescinded their order firing gay workers. That wasn't enough.
The protesters wanted more, demanding the restaurant chain we hired
the dismissed employees. Cracker Barrel refused.
Speaker 27 (24:46):
Dan Evans, chairman of Cracker Barreugh, sent this letter saying, quote,
we are an equal opportunity employer. We hire and advance
our employees on the basis of their ability.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Now, the group says it has no other recourse except
to protest, because firing a person because of his or
her sexual preference is not against the law in the
state of Georgia.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
That's when the protesters stepped it up a notch.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Very important that you realized that we're the ones that'll
be arrested.
Speaker 27 (25:12):
Will go first.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Gay activists entered Cracker Barrel restaurants at their busiest times
like Mother's Day, took up all the tables, ordered just
a cup of coffee, then sat there for three hours.
They were effectively doing sit ins to try and bankrupt
the restaurant. Now for criminals.
Speaker 21 (25:34):
More than a dozen kay rights activists are free on
bonds about it after they were arrested inside a Union
City Cracker Barrel restaurant.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
It wasn't long before the protests reached the national media.
Speaker 14 (25:45):
Can an employer dictate the sexual preferences of its workers?
That's the question being asked by several former employees of
the Cracker Barrel restaurants.
Speaker 11 (25:54):
One day they arrive at work and are told you
are fired.
Speaker 13 (25:57):
The reason because they're gay. If you go out to dinner,
wouldn't bother you if you're a waiter was homosexual.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The LGBTQ protests of Cracker Barrel sparked a national debate
over gays in the workplace.
Speaker 14 (26:09):
Welcome back to Larry King Live with Cheryl Somerville, New
York City.
Speaker 13 (26:12):
Hello, look at this woman. I mean it is obvious
to see she's a homosexual. It's obvious to see.
Speaker 14 (26:18):
Let's say that's obvious, caller. Why should she not be
a cook?
Speaker 13 (26:22):
Why should she not be a cook?
Speaker 14 (26:23):
Why should she not be She can be a.
Speaker 13 (26:24):
Cook as long as she does her job and does
not come out of the kitchen. But this is very
offensive to a family restaurant. Why a person should have
to go into a restaurant with their family and then
their children start to have a weird idea of what
men and women should be.
Speaker 27 (26:41):
Love us All, a group with a provocative name of
Queer Nation, rallied to support the fired workers.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Were day in and day out. The LGBTQ protesters were
pounding at Cracker Barrel and Cheryl Somerville became their rallying cry.
Speaker 25 (27:01):
It's great to look out from here and see so
many people, to note how much support has come behind
this whole thing over the last year. It's growed, and
it's growed, and to look at today, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
But through all the noise, Cracker Barrel thought they had
the law on their side. However, when it came time
for the arrested sit in protesters to face justice, the
restaurant chain learned that the law would not stop the protests.
Speaker 12 (27:24):
We were at trial for three days. We had a jury.
Trespassing is what the charge was. We all got on
the stand, we admitted, yes, we had trespassed, and we
explained why we had trespassed, and at the end of it,
the jury found us not guilty.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Before it was all over, more than two hundred organizations
joined the Cracker Barrel boycott. Progressive churches, labor unions, and
civil rights organizations hounded the company for years. Large pension
plans refused to purchase the company's stock, and this is
where protesters saw a way to extend the fight far
into the future, and gay activists started a national campaign
(28:12):
to buy Cracker Barrel stock. They launched a buy one
campaign where they bought one share of the stock so
they had a voice in its policies. Large institutional investors
like the New York City Comptroller's Office, which managed a
city pension fund with Cracker Barrel shares, joined in with
the activists, submitting a proposal demanding the company adopt a
(28:32):
non discrimination policy that included sexual orientation. They pounded away
every year for the next decade, but time after time
it got voted down. Then In two thousand and two,
they got a break. The Human Rights Campaign or HRC,
the largest LGBTQ plus civil rights advocacy group in the
(28:53):
United States, launched what they called the Corporate Equality Index CEI,
as it came to be known, is a tool that
scores companies based on their adoption of gender identity protections.
In August two thousand and two, the Human Rights Campaign
published its first annual CEI scoring, rating over three hundred
(29:15):
companies on their work towards gender equality. In their first survey,
they singled out Cracker Barrel by name in the opening
pages of the report, giving the company a score of zero.
The rating clearly left a mark, because, three months later,
after a decade plus battle with gay activist shareholders, Cracker
Barrel added sexual orientation to the company's non discrimination policy.
(29:39):
The gay activists won, but they were just getting started,
because you see, America was going through a transition.
Speaker 15 (29:50):
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you're going to be
presented simple fact. Andrew Beckett was fired. You'll hear two
explanations for why he was fired. Ours and theirs. His
employers discovered his illness, and Ladies and gentlemen, the illness.
(30:14):
I'm referring to his AIDS. They panicked, and in their
panic they did what most of us would like to
do with AIDS, which is just get it and everybody
who has it as far away from the rest of
us as possible.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Films like Philadelphia and The Birdcage, and TV shows like Ellen,
Will and Grace, Six Feet Under and The L Word
were all bringing the LGBTQ lifestyle into the mainstream. Hollywood
was shifting culture, and Wall Street followed. Corporate rating tools
like CEI were being used as weapons to control company policy.
(30:49):
Institutional investors began refusing to purchase stocks of a company
that didn't score high in the way they handled climate change, diversity,
and gender equality. If you didn't make an attempt to
score well in the CEI report, your company would not
only be locked out of billions of dollars of investment capital,
you faced being sued into oblivion by disgruntled gay employees
(31:10):
and attacked by this same gay activists and national media
that had been trying to destroy Cracker Barrel for over
a decade.
Speaker 15 (31:18):
So the Old.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Country Store began to cooperate. They started off slowly. In
two thousand and six, CEI gave them a score of fifteen.
Four years later it jumped to fifty five. None of
their efforts were happening in their restaurants or gift shops.
It was all employee based. To counter the homophobic claims
that went back to nineteen ninety one, then the Human
(31:39):
Rights Campaign began changing their CEI scoring system, upping the ante.
Aside from being judged on workplace equality, they added points
for public support, like sponsoring a Pride parade. This section
gave the highest scoring in their rating system. What the
HRC was creating was a protection racket. If you paid,
(31:59):
they wouldn't attack. Cracker Barrel knew its customers would vehemently
reject rainbow representation in their restaurants, so they decided to
stay focused on employee equality. They supported an employee led
gay group called the lgbt Alliance, and through that group
they sponsored employee involvement in the twenty seventeen Nashville Pride Festival,
(32:20):
as well as a few LGBTQ events in other markets.
As Biden re entered the White House, Cracker Barrel's corporate
LGBTQ employee initiative made it to their website. They added
a diversity and inclusion page that stated quote.
Speaker 7 (32:34):
In twenty twenty one, Cracker barrel scored eighty on the
Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, which is the
national benchmarking tool measuring policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
and queer employees and as a primary driving force for
LGBTQ workplace inclusion.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
But aside from an image posted of a rainbow rocking
chair at one of their restaurants, their LGBTQ efforts were
almost entirely out of the site of their traditional customer.
They were payments to a protection racket so they wouldn't
be attacked by the LGBTQ activists. But then Cracker Barrel
started to change course. In the twenty twenty three version
(33:22):
of the CEI ranking, the Human Rights Campaign added new
criteria to their scoring. They wanted companies to provide health
insurance that funded gender transitions. Cracker Barrel refused to comply
with these new criteria. Their CEI score plummeted to thirty. Then,
at the end of twenty twenty four, just as Cracker
Barrel launched its brand refresh campaign, they removed the pride
(33:45):
page from their website. The only thing remaining was a
small blurb that mentioned their support of their gay employees.
And perhaps most noteworthy, when June twenty twenty five arrived,
Cracker Barrel dropped their sponsorship of the Nashville Pride Festival.
In other words, when Cracker Barrel launched their brand refresh,
they were also distancing themselves from the woke community. They
(34:06):
were coming back home to their traditional American principles. But
you wouldn't know that from listening to activists like Robbie Starbuck.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
So let's start with Nashville Pride. Yes, Cracker Barrel is
a proud sponsor of Nashville Pride, but their own website
says quote this year, Cracker Barrel's focus was to be
a part of the Pride experience.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Both of those statements are false. Cracker Barrel had already
dropped their Nashville Pride sponsorship and removed the Pride experience
verbiage from their website. Conservative influencers were attacking Cracker Barrel
for things they'd already terminated. But the problem is sometimes
the whole truth is not good clickbait. It looks really
(34:46):
really really cool. Yeah, these are chairs you can buy
right here. Adriana and I recently visited a Cracker Barrel
for the first time in the heart of southern California.
I want to kitten, if the brand was woke, this
would not have been the place to hide.
Speaker 16 (35:01):
It being answer, okay, what are we doing?
Speaker 13 (35:06):
Is this?
Speaker 6 (35:06):
It is this the one person game.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We saw no indication of a company that had gone woke.
What we did see was the restaurant version of a
serviceman returning home from the Vietnam War. Cracker Barrel felt
like a battered culture warrior, not given the respect that
it deserves or so desperately needs, which leads us back
(35:46):
to the question why do conservative brands go woke? The
answer is culture pushes them towards protection rackets. Hollywood, the
legacy media, music, literature, the storytelling industry has been injecting
wokeness into the America and bloodstream for decades, and as
Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream of culture. If
(36:09):
the Right continues to shun the thing that defines American culture,
conservative brands will be forced to pay the woke protection
racket just to stay alive. There is perhaps no corporate
brand that has fought longer to represent traditional America than
Cracker Barrel. It went to war with the power center
of the woke mob before woke was even a thing,
battling with the LGBTQ community for decades, but ultimately much
(36:33):
of their traditional clientele abandoned the brand. Their design refresh
wasn't wokeness. They started rejecting the Wolke protection racket at
the same time they introduced a brand refresh. But conservative
influencers have become addicted to outrage clickbait. They've resorted to
bending the truth while spitting on the culture warrior that
was coming home from a long battle. Could Cracker Barrel
(36:56):
have made a better brand refresh decision? Sure, But if
we're going to toss culture warriors like Cracker Barrel to
the wolves for trying to turn around their business, and
maybe conservative influencers need to start looking harder in the mirror.
Speaker 10 (37:09):
Most of you know, my brilliant son Spencer's gaye. A
little bit bit of gay is in your soup and
it makes me taste better. And I basically believe that
people should be left alone and you should concentrate on
your own sins. If indeed that is a sin.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
Red pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures. Now, you can get ad free access to
our entire catalog of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America dot com and could
join in the top menu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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