Years
ago, when I first moved to Toronto, I found a trifold
photocopied brochure for a hole-in-the-wall Indian takeaway
and decided to give it a try. The order arrived promptly
and, as I traded my cash for the food, the delivery guy
paused to ask how I’d heard about his little operation.
Me:
Why do you ask?
Delivery
guy: Marketing.
Right.
He was doing a bit of DIY consumer research on how to
keep his one-man operation afloat. All I could picture
was the sad brochure dropped through the mail slot. But
halfway up the stairs, it hit me—the most brilliant
marketing strategy ever conceived: make your butter chicken
impossible to resist. Dial in on your 11 herbs and spices
formula until the sauce is so silky, sweet and fiery that
it weakens your knees.
They
don’t call it l'esprit de l'escalier for
nothing.
I
thought back to that moment when news broke that Cracker
Barrel had joined the ranks of Bud Light and Jaguar with
a rebrand faceplant.
ICYMI:
a massive deep-South restaurant chain, desperate to revive
sagging sales, decided to ‘modernize.’ So
it poured $700 million into transforming its look from
granny’s attic clutter to something sleeker, brighter—almost
Hamptons chic.
They
simplified the logo.
And remodeled the interior.
You may have heard what happened next: Twitter conservabros
melted down in real time. This wasn’t about light
fixtures and a coat of ‘arctic whisper’ white—it
was a Pearl Harbor–style sneak attack in the culture
wars, a middle-of-the-night raid by marketing elites who
would rather carry a Michael Kors bag than eat at a Cracker
Barrel; a giant middle finger to grandma’s quilt-and-antique
aesthetic, swapped out for Martha’s Vineyard shiplap
by coastal, oatmilk-sipping brand consultants insisting
cracker-barrel kitsch was tacky, outdated and unworthy.
This
meme about sums up the social media fainting spell.
It all made for an entertaining distraction, but I feel
like the brouhaha missed the mark.
Don’t
get me wrong. I get why conservatives lost their minds:
they’ve been feeling under siege. Andrew Breitbart’s
mantra—politics is downstream from culture—is
something they mutter in their sleep. But simplifying
a logo isn’t really “woke.” As for the
interior makeover—all that’s pure early-2000s
HGTV reality show; the before-and-after transformation
of a depressingly dismal space magically transforming
into a Dwell magazine spread. Women—and Cracker
Barrel’s CEO is a woman—LOVE declutter makeovers.
They dream of covering every wood-panelled wall with a
coat of white, which makes grown men cry.
As
for what happened next—besides CBRL -0.23%? dropping
13 percent in one day—well, I’ll let Trump
tell you.
Of
all the takes out there—and there have been plenty—the
best arrived today via Chris Bray’s excellent Substack,
Tell Me How This Ends, and it ties back to my story about
the Indian delivery guy.
In
a post titled “People Who Can’t Understand
a Biscuit,” he explains exactly why Cracker Barrel’s
rebrand blew up like a glitter bomb at a gender reveal.
For one, its homespun, mom-and-pop Americana theme is
a lie—Vanguard and BlackRock are its two biggest
shareholders—and its food is hot garbage. (He mentions
customers spying microwaves through the kitchen’s
saloon-style doors and rock-hard biscuits.)
Also,
if you want real, actual country-style comfort food, try
what Bray discovered during his infantry days at Fort
Benning, when a local civic group rolled in with a pit
smoker hitched to a truck and served up a dinner that
was, in his words, ‘laughably good.’ Later,
on weekend trips to places like Athens, Asheville, or
Destin, Bray found the same magic in church parking lots
and gas station edges—meat smoking in plain sight,
the air so thick with hickory and pork fat you could smell
it five minutes before you arrived.
The
most tantalizing part of Cracker Barrel’s failure
is how it threw millions at consultants, focus groups,
design firms, ad buys, and renovations. Not to mention
a preposterous Strategic Transformation Plan, which you
can read about in this highly entertaining Fox Business
behind-the-scenes exposé of boardroom infighting.
The
Plan includes such goals as “enhancing the menu,”
“evolving the store and guest experience,”
“winning in digital and off-premise” and “elevating
the employee experience.” (Marketing types are always
up for elevating things). It also includes a 16-slide
PowerPoint deck that makes for entertaining reading.
You
can almost imagine how a boardroom full of branding experts
received this with enthusiasm. “Wow! SmartLess!
Yes! Our favourite podcast!” Everyone basks in a
warm glow of self-congratulation. Then, like an Asch conformity
experiment, one lone dissenter timidly raises a hand.
“Uh… I don’t think our typical customer
has ever heard of SmartLess,” he whispers, only
to be drowned out by cheers and an orgy of high-fives.
Here’s
what Chris Bray would have advised Cracker Barrel.
My
first thoughts would all be about cooking, and the way
customers experienced it. Throw the microwaves away, knock
down a wall and open up the kitchen, park a smoker grill
next to the street. Show the cooking, marrying up the
dining room and the kitchen. Make the parking lot smell
like smoke and meat. As people walk up to the front door,
do they see and smell that good food is waiting for them
inside?
That’s
airtight marketing advice—and it’s free, unlike
eyewateringly expensive PowerPoint sorcery and armies
of executives ‘refining and evolving the brand across
all touchpoints.’ Much less than the $700 million
Cracker Barrel paid for a bunch of jiggery-pokery—spin,
fluff and lies—only to end up exactly where it started.
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