Corporations often re-brand their logos and redesign their stores. In recent years, a bland minimalism has been in vogue. So why is there such outrage at Cracker Barrel and its CEO for de-cluttering its restaurants and simplifying its logo? The answer is two-fold.

First, this action is the final straw in the hijacking of Cracker Barrel by activist executives who have made it abundantly clear that they despise the company’s image and that they despise its customer base. The old country gentleman has been removed from the logo, along with the words “Country Store.” That matters greatly to the chain’s legacy customers. As I have written about on previous occasions (see below), under the left-wing activists that are in control of the company, Cracker Barrel doesn’t want to serve you comfort food, they want to re-educate you.

Second, Cracker Barrel just drew the unlucky ticket in a lottery where outraged “normies” pick one company to visibly seek retribution as a warning to all woke corporations and executives.

If you’ve been employed at a publicly traded corporation over the past decade, you have almost certainly been through racial “struggle sessions,” been compelled to “celebrate” the sexual habits and religious practices of people who don’t share your values, seen hiring and promotions administered with a focus on race, gender, and sexual behaviors, etc. If you are straight, white, male, Christian, or patriotic, you have likely felt vilified by corporate America.

Consumers who want to fight back against “woke capital” have learned just how powerful they are when they target one egregiously woke company.

After Gillette ran its notorious ad campaign in 2019 accusing its loyal male customer base of being sexual predators, men abandoned the product in massive numbers. The damage was so severe that since that offensive ad, Procter & Gamble has had multiple write offs for losses due to Gillette’s impaired asset value. The amount that Gillette has cost P&G since that disastrous ad now exceeds $9 billion. The debacle has been so bad that Gillette has subsequently stopped publishing information on its share of the U.S. men’s wet shave market in its annual reporting.

Anheuser Busch had the number one selling beer in the United States with Bud Light, but its executives detested the customer demographic that actually consumed Bud Light, so Anheuser famously engaged a cross-dressing “influencer” to become the face of Bud Light. Outraged and energized consumers retaliated with perhaps the most famous consumer boycott of them all. The Bud Light brand lost tremendous market share, which it cannot recover.

After Target made it clear that men are always welcome in the women’s restrooms, and after pushing LGBT merchandise on children, Target sales stumbled and its stock price collapsed. Its hyper-woke destructor of a CEO, Brian Cornell, was finally pushed out just this past week.

Robbie Starbuck has done an amazing job of letting major corporations know that woke won’t be tolerated anymore, and when he shows up at a CEO’s door, the CEOs have started to realize they can either back off the woke agenda, or a crushing boycott is imminent. Tractor Supply has a very conservative customer demographic, and also a very left-wing CEO who was pushing a radical left-wing agenda on its employees. When Robbie showed up, the CEO immediately capitulated and dumped its DEI/ESG nonsense rather than go through what Bud Light had inflicted on itself.

It's now Cracker Barrel’s turn. It has a left-wing CEO, Julie Masino, whose career includes 12 years at Starbucks Coffee before coming to Cracker Barrel, and she clearly wants to remake Cracker Barrel into an operation that the cultural communists at Starbucks would be proud of.

Consumers have amazing power, and tens of millions are very angry about corporate America’s capture by left wing activists. Fed up Americans are seeking retribution, and they also know the power of making an example of a specific company to help educate other woke executives.

I have twice written about Cracker Barrel’s offensive activism. In June 2023 I wrote about a growing disgust with Cracker Barrel’s promotion of the LGBT agenda, stating that “When I want a catfish dinner and some old time candy, I could not possibly care less about the sexual behaviors of the restaurant’s staff or patrons. I’d be grossed out if Cracker Barrel was devoting a month to celebrating heterosexual sex.”

In May of 2024, with Julie Masino plowing full speed ahead with the re-making of Cracker Barrel into a place where Seattle leftists would want to dine, I wrote:

In June of 2023 Cracker Barrel went woke, deciding that it could bring in new customers and investors by sexualizing the front porch with rainbow-striped rocking chairs. As it turned out, that was not a good marketing strategy, and it had the effect of repulsing existing customers who don’t want country cooking to be sexualized, be it gay, straight, or otherwise.

Cracker Barrel had implicitly smeared its existing customers, touting how it is becoming more “welcoming” by slathering rocking chairs with rainbows, and sponsoring pride events. About this I wrote:

I have been to Cracker Barrel with gay relatives. They did not feel unwelcome. Sexualizing the place does not make it any more welcoming. I’m straight, but I don’t need cleavage or tight outfits on waitresses to make me feel welcome. I would be just as disgusted if Cracker Barrel had decided to become a Hee Haw Hooters in order to attract more straight men.

With the recent brouhaha, in addition to the logo change removing any “country” imagery, Ms. Masino is also changing the restaurant’s interior design from the warmth and comfort of “Gramma’s parlor” to cold and austere. Seattle hipsters would love it. Cracker Barrel’s customers hate it.

Cracker Barrel’s Board of Directors have a crisis on their hands. They can fire Masino, apologize for the woke activism, and return to a focus on excellent country cooking (which has also suffered.) If not, the company can expect to go the way of Bud Light and never recover.

My latest piece at The Blaze has been published, Democrats Face Their ‘David Duke Moment’ in New York City.

In it, I recall how David Duke, a former grand wizard of the KKK, emerged as the Republican nominee in Louisiana’s 1991 “jungle primary” runoff for governor. The Democrat opponent, Edwin Edwards, was awful. He was a former governor who had been charged with bribery, and who later served time in jail for extortion and money laundering. For Republicans, it didn’t matter how awful the Democrat was, David Duke had to be defeated. Adopting the slogan “Vote for the crook – it’s important,” Republicans crossed party lines and ensured a huge defeat for Duke.

Imagine a candidate who refused to condemn lynchings. He’d be ostracized on the spot — and rightfully so. But Mamdani cannot bring himself to denounce the murder of Jewish women and children — and Democrat leaders can’t bring themselves to denounce him either.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]