Did Cracker Barrel Have a Choice?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You want to be in business. You want to own
your own slice of the American dream, be your own boss. Now,
that's how the country was built. Somebody had a dream,
made it happen, grew it up, it outgrew them, sold
it usually to a bigger company which either took it
public and erected or kept it private and wrecked it. Now,
that doesn't happen all the time. If the place does

(00:21):
go down, though, usually starts with leadership decisions CEO's coos, cmos,
SVPs and alphabet soup of ego, hubris and arrogance. Is
that what happened to Cracker Barrel or bud Light or Target?
These are recent corporate giants in America who made bold
but bad moves that cost them hundreds of millions in

(00:44):
lost value. In the case of Cracker Barrel, the Tennessee
based casual restaurant chain which lost one hundred million in
a week, did it have a choice six hundred stores
that have been losing stock value for years. Over the
last five years, Cracker Barrel traffic was down twenty percent. Ooh,
their famous uncle Herschel, the guy in the logo. They

(01:08):
dumped them and that's what caused the big spill last week.
Casual dining is competitive, and Cracker Barrel is attempting to
keep up. Watched competitors like Chili's and Applebee's reverse their
downward trends, lourering new customers with ten dollars specials and
buying time on social media, primarily using young influencers. Cracker

(01:30):
Barrel got a new CEO. She went hipper, started giving
those stores facelifts, got rid of the stuff on the
walls and scaled back those famous trinket sections that greet
us as we walk in and out. That stuff made
it feel like you were Grandma's house. The changes weren't
popular because their customers like having dinner at Grandma's house.

(01:51):
When they changed the logo, it went viral. Some fans
were so outraged. Somebody made up a quote by CEO
Julie Messino telling MAGA fans quote, they don't have to
eat here. Unquote. She never said that, but magafolks shoot
first and ask questions later, and if it's on Twitter,
it must be true. Mesino says, every change is the

(02:14):
result of exhaustive research. Right, aren't they all like using
a cross dressing trands to push bud light, which focus
group thought that was a good idea, The same one
that prompted Target to put transgender swimwear with anatomically correct
mannequins on display. Cracker Barrel and its gen X and

(02:37):
gen Y leaders made a common mistake. They think that
young people are only influenced by today. Not so, And
the best example of that is kfab, now over one
hundred years old. Now, how have we survived newspapers, TV,
then cable, the internet, streaming, and now podcasts in part

(02:59):
by providing the same product consistently every minute of every day,
even when kfab was playing records. The idea was to
get you from one newscast to a traffic report, whether
farm prices, sportscast, and something funny insightful are important or
all three. Kfab had and has a target audience of
thirty five to sixty year olds. That's a pretty big boat.

(03:23):
What do thirty five and sixty year olds have in common?
Nothing except a daily need for the same things. Both
want to know what's happening in their city, state, in
the world, what the economy is doing. Is it safe
to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Well, I
need a jacket. Today, they're a Husker Creighton fan, care
about the environment, want to know what their elected leaders

(03:44):
are doing, and if a new business is coming to town.
That's why both thirty five and sixty year olds listen
to this radio station. How does the thirty five year
old know about KFAB their parents and that thirty five
year old's fifth grader is listening now? I believe it's
the same in retail and restaurants. As a kid, my

(04:06):
parents took us to Cracker Barrel. I liked it then,
I like it now. I know that brand. It's casual, comfortable, different,
and the food is good. Now you may have to
shift advertising from billboards to Instagram and TikTok. Show kids
not Grandpa eating the chicken fried steak. Maybe you offer
a burger special, but sometimes the best moves are the

(04:28):
big ones you don't make. Cracker Barrel gave us one
hundred million reasons why