Are the rumors really true?

This didn’t just start with this most recent announcement. Cracker Barrel has been doing a soft transformation for years now, and it all started with serving mimosas for Sunday brunch and beer and wings on Saturday nights. They’ve been troubling the waters of change and testing their patrons’ limits, and evidently Mawmaw and Pawpaw have not put up much of a fuss.

But I’ve now seen glimpses on news articles and social media feeds about Cracker Barrel’s rebranding and store redesign.

The restaurant’s new interior color scheme, with white and gray board-and-batten walls, have all the personality of stale loaf bread. On said walls hang carefully curated collections of images that look like they came from a discount bin store or a Big Lots, rather than the museum-quality antiques and other vintage finds that make a Cracker Barrel worth more than just a visit for a meat-and-three meal, or a country breakfast anytime.

Speaking of store, I’ve heard there will be no more “old country store” with seasonal clothing, patchwork quilts, kitchenware, birthday cards of the year you were born, and the toy selection with those curled-up sleeping cats that appear to be breathing. No more twenty or more flavors of old-fashioned stick candy. No more holiday doodads and no more adorable children’s outfits.

Oh, but there is still supposed to be a store according to Youngest Daughter, who is also following the Cracker Barrel trend with great interest, but as she gets all of her news from TikTok, I would take it with a grain of salt, as in a bite of salty ham.

“But, Mom,” she said, “I guess you know why Cracker Barrel is doing all of this.”

“No,” I responded. “I really have no clue.”

She proceeded to describe various TikTok conspiracy videos which, when taken altogether, sound more like something seen in a Jordan Peele or Quentin Tarantino film. Example: the “cracker” in “Cracker Barrel” supposedly refers to a whip that would have been used to beat slaves.

The last time I checked, despite the redesign, they’re keeping the name, so I’m going to leave this appalling thought to TikTok conspiracy theories, AI chatbots, and overactive adolescent minds.

So here are the options the rest of us have to explain why this change is so necessary: maybe Cracker Barrel is simply trying to update their image. Maybe they’re curating a more polished, simpler look for younger generations. Maybe they’re trying to make it harder for those same teenage kids to slip in their own pictures on the wall, which they’ve been doing for a while now and posting the evidence on–you guessed it–TikTok.

Maybe Cracker Barrel has done studies and surveys and performed a cost analysis, and the powers-that-be can see that they’re going to come out more financially sound in the long run.

But if it flops, let us learn our lesson.

My family has had an untold number of celebratory dinners at Cracker Barrel restaurants all over the Southeast. My folks will even seek out a Cracker Barrel on a family vacation when we could go to many other restaurants unique to our vacation spot, ones we could never visit at home.

But my people, we creatures of habit, would rather have the tried and true: country ham, fried chicken, hashbrown casserole, and a basket of biscuits.

We like a place where nostalgia and memory hang on the walls, where we can look up and see tools that our grandparents used for everyday tasks.

We like a roaring fireplace on cold winter evenings, complete with a checkerboard and a couple of rocking chairs.

We like the wooden paneling, brown latticework, oil lamps, and vintage advertisements.

There are few places where we can get any of that anymore, for we’ve turned our homes into “farmhouses” complete with whitewashed board-and-batten walls that we dare not hammer a nail into. We’ve torn down our old barns and used the wood to make wine racks and outdoor planters, and we call them rustic.

Pawpaws everywhere are rolling in their graves.

The last thing we need is one more generic space where a people’s culture and memory are erased in the name of something new and modern. 

I can’t speak to the history of Cracker Barrel, but I can speak to the history of grandfathers who plowed from sun-up to sun-down behind a mule and grandmothers who scrubbed their fingers raw on a washboard. I can tell how they slaughtered their hogs and cured their ham with salt. I can tell how they split logs for firewood, churned their own butter, and gathered around the radio long before anyone in town had a television set.

And for a moment, I feel like I can still go to that time and place, whenever I visit a Cracker Barrel.

They say the rollout of the new design will take several years, so we have a little while to bid farewell to the old look.

At least they say they’re going to keep the peg game. We can still see who is an “ig-no-ra-mus” after placing our orders, or go meander through the store area, and then do a last washing of our hands before dinner is served.

I’ll be there in body, but in soul I’ll be somewhere with the old people, storing up memories for hard times, and grabbing a stick or two of old-fashioned candy. 

I hope it’s all just a bunch of rumors, but today’s grandmothers are drinking mimosas.

It will never be the same.