We've Reached the Sad Cracker Barrel Stage of Cultural Evolution

Can you imagine fans of Latin music showing support for the Taco Bell logo? Or how about rock fans fretting over a Hard Rock Cafe rebrand?

No, that would never happen. Those folks mock fake insignias of their core values.

But Cracker Barrel launched a new logo and decor last week, and panic spread through fans of rural and country lifestyles. They demand the immediate return of the barrel—and the cracker too.

Petitions got signed. The stock plummeted. Pundits took sides. Comedians made jokes.

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Hey, I love American traditions as much as the next bumpkin. But Cracker Barrel isn’t a tradition by any stretch of the imagination. The company was founded on September 19, 1969. That’s exactly one month after the end of Woodstock.

Even Jed Clampett could sniff out the phoniness at this chain restaurant.

The Beverly Hillbillies have older country roots than Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel is a postmodern pastiche of rural tropes. Jean Baudrillard would call it a simulacrum. By that he means that it’s a symbol disconnected from reality—it merely refers vaguely to other symbols.

So you can’t bring back my grandpa’s Cracker Barrel—because my paw-paw never saw a Cracker Barrel.

“Cracker Barrel’s biggest shareholder is BlackRock. Did you think it was Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson?”

I’ve diagnosed several problems in our culture in recent articles. And they all come together in this controversy.

• Our culture is too corporatized.

• We’re losing the ability to distinguish fake and real.

• We’re more focused on the old than the new, but without any real historical perspective.

• We suffer from pervasive stagnation—relying on stale formulas, many of them sham or shallow.

Add all those up, and it looks like brunch at Cracker Barrel.

The biggest shareholder is BlackRock. Did you think it was Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson?

Rocking chairs outside of a Cracker Barrel (Source)

I’ve written about the origins of country lifestyles (and music), and have traced them back to the Neolithic age. It’s surprising how much we still imitate the first pastoral and agricultural communities.

It’s a glorious tradition, and deserves to be celebrated and preserved. But this has nothing to do with Cracker Barrel and its faux country logo.

“Walk away from Cracker Barrel, and find some Southern comfort food at a family-owned restaurant. That’s a genuine way of supporting traditional values.”

I embrace countrified ways of life—after all, I moved to Texas a few years ago. (Okay, I moved to Austin, which is a bit weirder than the rest of the state, but it’s still Texas.) And the reality is that rural culture is threatened not only by city slickers (like me), but also fakery in its own camp.

Just consider the extravagant Southern twangs that dominate country music. People rarely talk like that in the South nowadays—but in music the drawl is exaggerated. It won’t go away, because it’s now a commoditized signifier of authenticity.

The same is true in fashion. I rarely see cowboy hats or cowboy boots in Texas. (Believe it or not, there are more ranch and agriculture jobs in California.)

But in the world of country music those fashion accessories are required, almost like a uniform for a McDonald’s worker. Would you like a steer with that? The formula is more revered than reality.

And Cracker Barrel is even more fake and formulaic than anything in country music. The music, for a start, isn’t owned by BlackRock (not yet).

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If fans of Cracker Barrel are seeking a just cause, they should focus on the food—which has sadly declined in recent years. One disgruntled customer published a long rant on social media in the aftermath of the logo dispute:

The real reason Cracker Barrel has been struggling is that its service and food quality nose-dived after COVID….They stopped bringing you biscuits and cornbread as a matter of course, then they shrunk them, the food started to taste and look reheated instead of freshly prepared, and the service got slower and sloppier. Everyone who’s been a loyal customer over the years has experienced this. It’s undeniable.

Dozens of other disappointed customers responded with similar stories.

“A whistleblower has said that several years ago they started replacing fresh-cooked food with frozen and reheated food,” noted one observer. “Stores are all filthy, table tops sticky, dust everywhere,” adds another former customer. “Food quality has plummeted while prices are same or higher.”

Let’s be honest. Rural and traditional life has bigger problems than a sterile logo. We really should preserve family farms. Something is wrong when Bill Gates is the biggest farmer in America. We ought to care about rural jobs. We should preseve rural environments too.

And here’s the most important point of them all—and one that’s missing from the Cracker Barrel debate. So I’m putting it in boldface.

If you want to preserve traditional country values, you must support family and small, indie businesses. They are the foundation of traditional society. Without them, the country lifestyle is a lie.

So just walk away from Cracker Barrel, and find some Southern comfort food at a family-owned restaurant. That’s a genuine way of supporting traditional values.

And while you’re at it, stop worrying about logos and retail decor. That’s a postmodern sickness, and a total waste of time. The first step in a healthy lifetyle is ignoring anything that comes out of the advertising or marketing world.

After all, a good meal doesn’t even need a logo.