Cracker Barrel CEO explains logo change was for highway visibility

Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino advised an funding convention Tuesday that the corporate has up to date its emblem so it’s extra seen on freeway billboards.

She famous that the transfer was not ideological, in response to The Wall Road Journal.

“A part of this transformation is creating long-term success,” Masino stated Tuesday on the 13D Monitor Energetic-Passive Investor Summit in New York Metropolis.

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These plans rapidly got here to a halt after public outcry pressured the corporate to reverse the transfer.

FOX Enterprise contacted Cracker Barrel for remark.

The brand new Cracker Barrel emblem on a menu at a restaurant on August 21, 2025 in Pembroke Pines, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Pictures)

In mid-August, Cracker Barrel launched a brand new emblem, changing the acquainted illustration of “Uncle Herschel” with a contemporary design that includes solely the corporate’s title. It confronted a barrage of backlash, together with from President Donald Trump, who posted on Fact Social that the corporate wanted to confess it made a mistake and “handle the corporate higher.”

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The inventory value additionally took a success, finally main the restaurant chain to reverse course only a week later.

A Cracker Barrel restaurant in Dumfries, Virginia, Could 21, 2024. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg/Getty Pictures)

The corporate initially defended its determination to vary its emblem, saying that the Uncle Herschel character “will nonetheless be on our menu (welcome again Uncle Herschel’s favourite breakfast dish), on our highway indicators and in our nationwide retailer. He is not going anyplace – he is household.”

The corporate additionally admitted that it “might have carried out a greater job of speaking who we’re and who we at all times might be” after clients expressed outrage over the restaurant chain’s new emblem. Nevertheless, it was not sufficient to vary public sentiment.

Through the convention, Felss Masino additionally mentioned what it is prefer to have been focused by an activist investor for greater than a decade, in response to the Journal.

Sardar Biglari has been specializing in the restaurant chain since 2011. Biglari, founding father of Biglari Capital Corp., which owns 2.9% of Cracker Barrel’s frequent inventory, has run seven proxy contests on the chain.

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A Cracker Barrel Nation Retailer in Fishkill, NY, August 25, 2025. (Richard Beetham for Fox Information Digital)

Biglari can also be the CEO of Biglari Holdings Inc., the guardian firm that owns restaurant chains equivalent to Steak ‘n Shake and Western Sizzlin.

Simply final month, Biglari tried to persuade the board to rethink his management as a result of it will destroy shareholder worth.

“We’re in search of shareholder assist to vote in opposition to these administrators, not solely due to… severe destruction of shareholder worth but in addition a deeper lack of ability to know the model, its clients and its heritage, and an lack of ability to meet the Board of Administrators’ most essential job: choosing the best CEO,” Biglari Capital wrote within the proxy submitting.

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Biglari Capital stated the board and administration by their methods have “betrayed the corporate’s legacy, alienated loyal clients and undermined investor confidence.”