Despite rumors that Cracker Barrel fired CEO Julie Masino, a spokesman for the company denied the allegations.

Masino recently faced backlash from conservatives after Cracker Barrel attempted a “woke” rebrand of its logo and its restaurant interiors.

Those controversies, among others about the restaurant’s food preparation, fueled employee rumors that Masino had been “ousted,” the New York Post reported Sept. 19.

The primary evidence for those rumors, however, seemed thin.

Masino would often send video updates to employees across the company. When she suddenly stopped doing them — amid the rebrand fiasco — the rumors began.

But in a statement to the New York Post, Cracker Barrel said the rumors weren’t true.

The company’s leadership “communicates with team members across the Company through a variety of channels, including in person meetings, videos and emails,” a spokesman said.

As of Saturday, the Cracker Barrel corporate website still listed Masino as president and CEO of the company.

But not everyone in the company’s leadership is happy about it.

In a Saturday interview with Fox Business, Cracker Barrel co-founder Tommy Lowe, 93, criticized Masino, who previously served as president of Taco Bell.

“Taco Bell is not Cracker Barrel,” Lowe said. “She knows very little about Cracker Barrel’s operation — the history, the food. The idea she’s come up with… doesn’t fit the customer.

“If she’d go out and sit on the front porch and talk to all the customers that come in there, she’d have a little bit of a different outlook,” he added.

In an Aug. 28 interview, Lowe also skewered Masino about the logo switch-up.

“Food is something they need to work on. Spending $700 million to do that… is throwing money out the street,” Lowe told WTVF-TV in Nashville.

???? JUST IN: The founder of Cracker Barrel, 93 year old Tommy Lowe, just SLAMMED the woke rebrand of the restaurant

“It’s crazy… It’s PITIFUL!”

Mr. Lowe also hit the new leftist CEO: “Spending $700 million to do that… they’re just money out into the street!”

God Bless this… pic.twitter.com/eDNvhjL76W

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 29, 2025

And while the company ultimately decided not to touch the logo or the remaining restaurant interiors, as Lowe mentioned, the food needs some work.

Employees and customers both complained when management ordered a change in how meatloaf and biscuits would be prepared.

Rather than baking the meatloaf fresh each day, management ordered cooks to prepare it the night before and microwave it the next day, the New York Post reported.

“We were told meatloaf will be fresh every day,” a cook told the Post. “Then they said cold portions will be on Monday through Thursday.”

As a cost-cutting measure, management also ordered that biscuits be prepared the day before, frozen, then reheated the next day.

But after customers complained the biscuits were “hard as a rock,” management backpedaled and began making biscuits fresh each day.

“I honestly feel like [management] is floundering to see what they can get away with, what they need to change and what they can keep and not be noticed,” a cook told the New York Post.

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