Cracker Barrel’s attempt to rebrand its corporate logo spurred a viral backlash, prompting the company to backtrack. It occurred as the company’s leaders were attempting to address the restaurant chain’s weakening financial performance.
The company’s stock surged in the years prior to the pandemic, reaching an all-time high of $185 a share in November 2018. While Cracker Barrel’s stock briefly rebounded to near those levels in the spring of 2021, it has seen a significant decline in the years since the pandemic and is trading around $62 a share as of Wednesday despite rising over 8% on the day.
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino launched a transformation project a year ago aimed at boosting sales and energizing its customer base as the brand faced stagnation. The attempted logo rebrand, which the company reversed on Tuesday, was part of that effort.
The transformation push has yielded mixed financial results to date. Cracker Barrel reported in its third quarter of fiscal year 2025 that its comparable restaurant sales were up 1% year-over-year, while retail sales were down 3.8% over that period.
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Though retail sales only account for 17% of Cracker Barrel’s revenue, the dipping sales do affect profit margins.
The company is also facing headwinds from tariffs on the products it sells from the retail side of its business, which have created cost pressures for the company and have forced it to reevaluate its supply chain.
“For context, approximately one-third of our retail products are sourced directly from vendors in China,” Cracker Barrel’s Masino said on the third quarter earnings call.
“In addition to this direct exposure, we also have indirect exposure related to products that we purchased through domestic vendors that is also sourced from China,” Masino explained. “Our approach to mitigate the tariff impacts include: first, aggressively negotiating with vendors; second, alternate sourcing; and third, pricing.”
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Masino said Cracker Barrel’s teams have been working to rationalize their product offerings in terms of the number of SKUs and themes, as well as their timing to better align with customer demand. For instance, she noted the company has historically put out its Halloween and Christmas themes relatively early, though that may change.
Other ways in which the company is addressing tariffs include working with vendors and negotiating with them and their suppliers, as well as by other means such as through sourcing products from different parts of the world.
“Then as the last lever and look, pricing is an option. But we’re being very thoughtful about pricing because this business is so discretionary. And we know from work that we’ve done around the transformation that value is important in this business just like it is in our restaurant business,” Masino said.
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Cracker Barrel noted that it carried forward price hikes of 1.5% from fiscal year 2024, while it is raising prices 3.4% in fiscal 2025, which will ultimately leave prices about 5% higher than before the increases.
Cracker Barrel said that it expects a $5 million hit to earnings due to tariffs in the fourth quarter.
Masino was asked by an analyst if that figure represents a run rate the company expects to see in the 2026 fiscal year.
“We’ll have more to share about how to think about ’26 in tariffs in September because we’ll present our annual guidance,” Masino said, adding that the guidance will go deeper in outlining that mitigation strategy.
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