This past Saturday, a friend of mine asked if the recent events in the markets were as exciting as they seemed to be. She was more than a little surprised when I told her they were not. After all, despite all of the noise and fantastical headlines, investors are doing the same thing they’ve been doing for the last, oh, 12-months or so.
Investors have simply been waiting on the Federal Reserve to start cutting the overnight rate again.
Everything else? It doesn’t appear to matter terribly much unless it somehow impacts, you guessed it, what the Fed is going to do with the overnight rate.
With that said, something this week caught my attention arguably more so than it should have. It probably did you, too. This being the brouhaha over Cracker Barrel’s (CBRL) rebranding. My goodness. Who would have thought people would care so much about a chain restaurant’s signage?
In case you haven’t kept up with the story, from what I can tell, CBRL attempted to refresh its image by removing an old man in a rocking chair from its logo. Frankly, I am not sure I could have told you there was one until this week, even though I have undoubtedly seen the image, quite literally, thousands of time.
Further, I had no idea his name was Uncle Herschel.
As such, to say I didn’t care the company axed him from the corporate logo would be an understatement. What’s more, I kind of liked the new one. Better put, I wasn’t sure what there was about the new one to cause such, shall I say, passion.
At the end of the day, a restaurant chain known for its “Southern comfort food” removed a cartoon from its signage, and a lot of people went ballistic. Even the President of the United States had an opinion about it, although that doesn’t seem to be as unusual as it once was.
Now, you might remember my comments about CBRL from last summer. Back then, I ate at the one off I-65 at Exit 9 in Sellersburg, Indiana, on a Friday night in early June. It was largely forgettable but for the fact that the place was mostly empty. At most, it was perhaps one-third full, which I found somewhat surprising.
When I mentioned this to a particularly extroverted fellow traveler the next morning at the complimentary breakfast in my motel, he responded with something along the lines of: “well, it ain’t no wonder. They charge a lot of money for basic home cooking, which I can do at the house for a [heckuva] lot less.”
That is the moment when I truly realized just how much a huge swath of our consumer base was struggling in this economy. For me, CBRL is a dependable spot to get a relatively wholesome meal when I don’t want fast food while on the interstate. Somewhat ashamedly, I had never really considered how CBRL might be one of life’s little luxuries for many.
Regardless, management apparently believed the company’s relatively sluggish growth over the last several years was due more to changing consumer behaviors and aging demographics. So, what better way of changing the blahs than by revamping the old image? You know, making it fresher for a younger, more hip consumer?
Clearly, that spelled doom for our boy Uncle Herschel. Talk about a square. I mean, what self-respecting teenager or social media influencer would be caught dead in a place with HIM as part of the logo? Please. Send him back on the train to Boring, and make it an express.
What the kids these days want is a dope corporate logo. They want that thing to be drip, totally lit and on fire. They want their meatloaf to be skibidi and their fried chicken off the chain. Hashbrown casserole has to slay, and iced tea needs to be sick.
While they are at it, they should try to get people to abbreviate it or give it a nickname, like KFC or Mickey D’s. Who knows? Maybe CB’s or Da CB Shack might catch on with younger consumers who want their chicken-fried steak with a side order of cool.
Obviously, I am being ridiculous, and, yes, I had to look up skibidi, too.
As you know by now, CBRL relented to the severe negative reaction to the change in the logo, and decided to keep the old one with Uncle Herschel around. Interestingly, the day after their announcement, investors drove the stock significantly higher. In fact, the stock ended up trading higher than it was prior to the whole, now abandoned, rebranding.
If this seems a little crazy to you, it does to me as well. Other companies change their logos all the time, and no one seems to mind. So why all the furor over CBRL? What is so special about the phrase “Old Country Store” and a cartoon character that people would get upset about?
I asked several people their thoughts on the matter, and they all answered with something like: “Personally, I don’t really care and I am not really sure, but maybe…” Suffice it to say, they weren’t terribly concerned about it one way or the other. After all, the logo might have changed, or didn’t as the case may be, but CBRL still largely serves up what it has always served up. Its locations haven’t changed, and the price points about where they were.
You either like that kind of food or you don’t, really. The company’s brand isn’t its logo. It is its food, plain and simple, both literally and figuratively.
So, I guess those who were offended by the logo change won, if you want to call it that. I can only hope they go to CBRL more frequently, a lot more frequently, so the company doesn’t feel compelled to rebrand in the near future. Basically, they need to, as the old expression goes, put up or shut up.
That is, if there were actually any real people behind all that activity. I personally couldn’t find any, and I am just leery enough about social media and AI to wonder if this whole mess wasn’t actually a mess. Perhaps some marketing geniuses somewhere concocted this whole imbroglio to bring attention to an otherwise unexciting brand/company.
When was the last time CBRL was in the news like this? When was the last time you thought about the company or read articles about it?
Sure, that might sound crazier than people caring about Uncle Herschel in the first place, and it probably is. However, if there is any semblance of truth, brother… a country cooking restaurant chain from Tennessee might have just pulled off one of the greatest jokes on the American consumer in some time.
Regardless, good for them. One way or the other, intended or not, the marketing plan worked. People are talking about CBRL for the first time in a long time.
Well done, and a needed diversion from wondering about the Federal Reserve all the time.
Thank you for your continued support. As always, I hope this newsletter finds you and your family well. May your blessings outweigh your sorrows on this and every day. Also, please be sure to tune into our podcast, Trading Perspectives, which is available on every platform.
Chief Investment Officer
Please note, nothing in this newsletter should be considered or otherwise construed as an offer to buy or sell investment services or securities of any type. Any individual action you might take from reading this newsletter is at your own risk. My opinion, as well as those of our Investment Committee, is subject to change without notice. Finally, the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the rest of the associates and/or shareholders of Oakworth Capital Bank or the official position of the company itself.