❓WHAT HAPPENED: Cracker Barrel announced a new logo, sparking backlash on social media.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Cracker Barrel, Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Moore, and CEO Julie Felss Masino.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Changes announced on Tuesday, August 19, 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The CEO of Cracker Barrel is as woke as they come. She is destroying a once great American brand.” – Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz
🎯IMPACT: The redesign has led to criticism and debate about the company’s direction and identity.
Homestyle food chain Cracker Barrel has unveiled a bland new logo, having already received backlash for a modernist remodel of its interiors. The company claimed on Wednesday that the new logo “is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape”—despite removing the man and barrel that have defined the brand since the 1970s entirely, leaving only a background shaped vaguely like a barrel with a simplified text logo embossed on it. The chain has not had a text-only logo for 48 years.
Social media users quickly reacted to the changes. Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz criticized the CEO, former Taco Bell executive Julie Felss Masino, on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “The CEO of Cracker Barrel is as woke as they come. She is destroying a once great American brand.” Notably, the chain has celebrated Pride Month and promoted a ‘Cracker Barrel LGBT+ Alliance’ on its website since she was installed in late 2023.
NEW: Cracker Barrel reveals new logo, CEO Julie Felss Masino says people love their new rebrand.
“Honestly, the feedback’s been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we’re doing,” Masino told GMA while discussing the overall rebrand.
This logo is depressing. pic.twitter.com/EZVpWLv4Bg
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 20, 2025
Responding to the backlash against the previous remodeling of Cracker Barrel’s interiors—once homey and old-fashioned, now filled with the same plain, contemporary furniture as many other chains—Masino insisted she was keeping the Cracker Barrel brand relevant and that “People like what we’re doing,” adding: “Cracker Barrel needs to feel like the Cracker Barrel for today and for tomorrow.”
Similar modernist rebrands have been met with disdain in recent years. Most recently, once-iconic car company Jaguar embarked on a woke image change that was so poorly received that its sales crashed, and the ad agency responsible was cut loose.
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