Cracker Barrel co-founder Tommy Lowe, 93, says the corporate’s new management doesn’t perceive the model’s roots or the shoppers who constructed it.
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino advised an investing convention on Tuesday that the corporate up to date its emblem in order that it was extra seen on freeway billboards.
She famous that the transfer wasn’t meant to be ideological, in line with The Wall Avenue Journal.
“A part of this transformation is organising success for the long run,” Masino stated in the course of the 13D Monitor Energetic-Passive Investor Summit in New York Metropolis on Tuesday.
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These plans rapidly got here to a halt after public outcry compelled the corporate to reverse the transfer.
FOX Enterprise reached out to Cracker Barrel for remark.
The brand new Cracker Barrel emblem on a menu inside a restaurant Aug. 21, 2025, in Pembroke Pines, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Photos)
In mid-August, Cracker Barrel launched a brand new emblem, changing the acquainted illustration of “Uncle Herschel” with a contemporary design that includes solely the corporate’s title. It confronted an onslaught of backlash, together with President Donald Trump, who posted on Fact Social that the corporate ought to admit that it made a mistake and “handle the corporate higher.”
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Its inventory additionally took successful, and finally it prompted the restaurant chain to reverse course only a week later.
A Cracker Barrel restaurant in Dumfries, Va., Might 21, 2024. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg/Getty Photos)
The corporate initially defended its determination to vary its emblem, saying the Uncle Herschel character “will nonetheless be on our menu (welcome again Uncle Herschel’s Favourite Breakfast Platter), on our highway indicators and featured in our nation retailer. He’s not going wherever – he’s household.”
It additionally admitted that the corporate may have executed a “higher job sharing who we’re and who we’ll all the time be” after prospects expressed outrage over the restaurant chain’s new emblem. Nonetheless, it wasn’t sufficient to vary the general public sentiment.
In the course of the convention, Masino additionally mentioned what it has been like being focused by an activist investor for over a decade, in line with the Journal.
Sardar Biglari has taken goal on the restaurant chain since 2011. Biglari, founding father of Biglari Capital Corp., which owns 2.9% of Cracker Barrel’s frequent inventory, has run seven proxy contests on the chain.
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A Cracker Barrel Nation Retailer in Fishkill, N.Y., Aug. 25, 2025. (Richard Beetham for Fox Information Digital)
Biglari can also be the CEO of Biglari Holdings Inc, which is the mum or dad firm that owns restaurant chains similar to Steak ’n Shake and Western Sizzlin.
Simply final month, Biglari tried to persuade the board into overhauling its management for allegedly destroying shareholder worth.
“We’re in search of shareholder assist to vote towards these administrators not solely because of the extreme destruction of shareholder worth but in addition a deeper failure to grasp the model, its prospects, and its heritage, and a failure to meet the Board’s most vital job, deciding on the best CEO,” Biglari Capital wrote within the proxy submitting.
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Biglari Capital stated the board and administration each “betrayed the corporate’s heritage, alienated loyal prospects and undermined investor confidence,” by means of their methods.