When Cracker Barrel unveiled its new logo this week, the company framed it as a blend of tradition and progress. Conservatives, however, erupted with outrage. Personally, I think folks need to take a breath, and I’m going to tell you why. I have a feeling many of you won’t agree with me, but hear me out.
“Anchored in Cracker Barrel’s signature gold and brown tones, the updated visuals will appear across menus and marketing collateral, including the fifth evolution of the brand’s logo, which is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all,” the company explained in a press release.
Let’s compare the old and new logos, shall we?
Am I the only one who isn't flipping out over this rebranding? pic.twitter.com/zkJPsqWWg0
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) August 21, 2025
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, the new logo doesn’t really work for me. I don’t understand why the shape isn’t an actual barrel, and there’s a bit too much negative space. But I get why they did it. In an era where every brand has to look good shrunk down on a smartphone screen—or plastered across social media platforms—sleeker, bolder, minimalist designs often win out over detailed, old-fashioned imagery with too many details that don’t scale well.
Whether it “makes sense” aesthetically is another story, but from a corporate standpoint, I see the logic.
That said, while I don’t exactly celebrate the redesign, I’m not in the camp that thinks this is some Bud Light-level disaster. Some on the right have compared this decision to Dylan Mulvaney’s partnership with Bud Light, claiming Cracker Barrel just detonated its longtime customer base. That’s ridiculous. Changing a logo—even a clumsy redesign—isn’t remotely on the same scale as aligning your brand with a dude who pretends to be a girl.
Still, conservatives aren’t reacting in a vacuum here. Their frustration comes from a clear pattern: Cracker Barrel, once seen as a conservative brand, has steadily drifted into corporate wokeness in recent years.
A couple of years back, I wrote about how the company caved to the woke mob by plastering itself in Pride Month messaging and touting its LGBT alliance. That’s where this latest firestorm picks up. Many now see this latest logo shift as nothing more than the next step in that same cultural surrender.
I don’t think it’s that cut and dry.
Some critics say the redesign is part of an effort to erase the “old white guy” from the logo, as if Uncle Herschel himself—yes, he has a name—had been targeted by some imagined anti-white male agenda. I think that’s a stretch. In fact, Cracker Barrel has already clarified to Forbes that “Uncle Herschel remains front and center in our restaurants and on our menu.”
To me, this looks more like a fairly common branding move than culture warfare—though plenty of people are eager to frame it that way.
The logo change comes as part of bigger shifts inside Cracker Barrel. Over the past year, dozens of locations have been remodeled with a brighter, more modern interior design aimed at drawing younger diners. To longtime customers, that feels like betrayal; to the boardroom, it looks like survival.
Rebrands always carry risk. Some companies pull off modern updates, others flop—but in an age of sleek, minimalist branding built for smartphones and social media, Cracker Barrel is hardly the first to try.
The problem is that chasing trends often means alienating the very customers who made you successful. That’s exactly what happened here. It happens.
For me, though, this isn’t a hill conservatives need to die on. Sure, Cracker Barrel has pandered to the left before, and the new logo is unimpressive. But does it really change your life? There are real battles in the culture war worth fighting—a restaurant chain’s sloppy logo refresh isn’t one of them.
