Cracker Barrel Antiques

[Stetson Saenz]

Whatu2019s the next best thing to a Croissant? That would be a biscuit! Back in October, I wrote a column for No Depression about my love for a Cracker Barrel breakfast while on the road. I have to say that despite all of my serious and sad-sack writing for ND, this Cracker Barrel column has gotten possibly the most feedback of any I\u2019ve written. Numerous people reached out to me personally about the piece, and when I was introduced to a buyer for a gig recently, she said \u201CHi Rachel! I just loved your column about Cracker Barrel!\u201D. I mean, wow, not how I thought the sentence was going to end, but I\u2019ll take it!

Somehow, this column made it onto the desk of Cracker Barrel\u2019s SVP \u2013 General Counsel & Corp. Secretary, Richard Wolfson, who, it turns out, is a huge music fan. Richard was very excited about the piece and invited me and George (my husband) on a VIP tour of the Cracker Barrel headquarters in Lebanon, TN, complete with a delicious meal and gigantic take-home boxes. Richard and everyone at the HQ were so kind, and it was a great way to spend a Tuesday morning.

My main reason for wanting to visit the HQ was that it includes the decor headquarters for all 600+ of their restaurants. If you know me, you know I\u2019m an interior design junkie, and I have a special love for old and broken things. We wandered around an enormous warehouse of old Americana antiques; shelves and shelves of cast iron pots, vintage kids toys, old brand signage, family photos, broken down instruments, etc. The CB design team sources these items from all over the country, cleans them up, and then builds them out into the displays you see in your local restaurants. They also tailor the antiques for each restaurant so that they reflect the local history of the area. There is a model store they use to place each item before sending an intricately detailed layout plan for installation which shows exactly where each item should go on the wall. They are really good at reusing old supplies and explained how they were framing out new shadow boxes with floorboards from a now-closed Cracker Barrel. This was as much of a dream job scenario as I had imagined in my original article!

I also learned that folks like to go into cracker barrels and hang their own decor on the walls, to see how long before it gets discovered. Sometimes the company will leave it up, just for fun. Here\u2019s a little rundown of that phenomenon.

Cracker Barrel has a problematic past, as outlined by this article (If someone has a better source than yahoo, please post below) and they are working to repair their racist and homophobic history. One interesting way they are doing this is by diversifying the decor that they include in their stores. When we walked into the warehouse I picked up a framed poster of Dr. Martin Luther King, and said \u201CWow! This is a new direction!\u201D (I can\u2019t help myself, I\u2019m a shit-stirrer! George looked at me like Seriously Rachel?!).

Anyway, Richard was super gracious about it, acknowledging the company\u2019s past wrongdoings, and explained that they were paying attention to the way that the decor made patrons feel and diversifying the antiques and faces on their walls. It\u2019s so interesting that even interior design can be, and mostly has been, racist, but of course, this is the kind of thing that white people like myself rarely see at first.

So, big thanks to Cracker Barrel and to all of you who have been following this random story. I will leave you with this fact, (my only source is Richard) - Cracker Barrel buys 6% of the WORLD\u2019s maple syrup. Yum.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., trading as Cracker Barrel, is an American chain of restaurant and gift stores with a Southern country theme. The company's headquarters are in Lebanon, Tennessee, where Cracker Barrel was founded by Dan Evins in 1969. The chain's early locations were positioned near Interstate Highway exits in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States, but expanded across the country during the 1990s and 2000s. As of August 10, 2023[update], the company operates 660 stores in 45 states.

Cracker Barrel's menu is based on traditional Southern cuisine, with appearance and decor designed to resemble an old-fashioned general store. Each location features a front porch lined with wooden rocking chairs, a stone fireplace, and decorative artifacts from the local area. Cracker Barrel partners with country music performers. It engages in charitable activities, such as its assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina and injured war veterans.

The company was criticized for anti-LGBT policies in the 1990s, which it reversed in response to backlash from the public and shareholders. In the early 2000s, Cracker Barrel was the subject of several civil rights lawsuits and a U.S. Justice Department investigation, all of which were settled. Cracker Barrel licensed products are sold in grocery stores under the name "CB Old Country Store" following a 2013 trademark-infringement lawsuit brought by Kraft Foods, which sells cheese under the brand name Cracker Barrel.

Cracker Barrel was founded in 1969 by Dan Evins, a representative for Shell Oil, who developed the restaurant and gift store concept initially as a plan to improve gasoline sales.[7] Designed to resemble the traditional country store that he remembered from his childhood, with a name chosen to give it a Southern country theme,[8] Cracker Barrel was intended to attract the interest of highway travelers.[7] The name comes from the barrels of soda crackers that could be found for sale in small-town stores across the American South in the early 1900s; people would stand around the barrels chatting and catching up, similar in purpose to contemporary office water coolers.[9]

The first restaurant was built close to Interstate 40, in Lebanon, Tennessee.[10] It opened on September 19, 1969,[11] serving Southern cuisine including biscuits, grits, country ham, and turnip greens.[10]

Evins incorporated Cracker Barrel in February 1970,[7] and soon opened more locations. In the early 1970s, the firm leased land on gasoline station sites near interstate highways to build restaurants.[8] These early locations all featured gas pumps on-site; during gasoline shortages in the mid to late 1970s, the firm began to build restaurants without pumps.[7]

Cracker Barrel became a publicly traded company in 1981 to raise funds for further expansion.[7][10] It floated more than half a million shares, raising $10.6 million.[8] Following the initial public offering, Cracker Barrel grew at a rate of around 20 percent per year;[12] by 1987, the company had become a chain of more than 50 units in eight states, with annual net sales of almost $81 million.[7] The company grew consistently through the 1980s and 1990s, attaining a $1 billion market value by 1992.[10][13][14] In 1993, the chain's revenue was nearly twice that of any other family restaurant.[8]

In 1994, the chain tested a carry-out-only store, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Corner Market, in suburban residential neighborhoods.[where?][14] In addition, it expanded into new markets through the establishment of more traditional Cracker Barrel locations, the majority of them outside the South, and tested alterations to its menus to adapt to new regions.[15] The chain added regional dishes to its menus, including eggs and salsa in Texas and Reuben sandwiches in New York, but continued to offer its original menu items in all restaurants.[13] Cracker Barrel did not close any locations until 1995, when a location on American Way in Memphis, Tennessee was closed due to it no longer meeting the company's standards.[16]

By September 1997, Cracker Barrel had 314 restaurants, and aimed to increase the number of stores by approximately 50 per year over the following five years.[15] The firm closed its Corner Market operations in 1997 and refocused on its restaurant and gift store locations. The company's president, Ron Magruder, stated that the chain was concentrating on strengthening its core theme, offering traditional foods and retail in a country store setting, with good service and country music.[12] The number of combined restaurants and stores owned by Cracker Barrel increased between 1997 and 2000, to more than 420 locations. In 2000 and 2001, the company addressed staffing and infrastructure issues related to this rapid growth by implementing a more rigorous recruitment strategy and introducing new technology, including an order-placement system.[17] Also in 1997, the company purchased the Mitchell House in Lebanon, Tennessee. The house had been the elementary dormitory and school for Castle Heights Military Academy which both Dan Evins and his son attended. The school had closed in 1986 and the building had sat empty since then. Cracker Barrel spent two million dollars to restore the home and used it as its corporate headquarters from 1999 to 2013.[18][19]

From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, the company focused on opening new locations in residential areas to attract local residents and workers as customers.[20] The chain opened its first restaurant and gift store not located near a highway in 1998, in Dothan, Alabama.[20] In the 2000s, in the wake of incidents including charges of racial discrimination and controversy over its policy of firing gay employees, the firm launched a series of promotional activities including a nationwide book drive and a sweepstakes with trips to the Country Music Association Awards and rocking chairs among the prizes.[21] It updated its marketing in 2006 to encourage new customers, changing the design of its highway billboard advertisements to include images of menu items. Previously the signs had featured only the company's logo.[22]

By 2011, Cracker Barrel had opened more than 600 restaurants in 42 states.[23][24][25] The company has since begun expansion to the West Coast: in 2017, their first store in the region opened in Tualatin, Oregon,[26] and their first store in California was opened the next year in Victorville.[27] In 2019 Cracker Barrel purchased Maple Street Biscuit Company for $36 million cash.[28]

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