‘The Big Money Show’ panelists react to Cracker Barrel’s failing rebrand as shares of the iconic chain take a steep hit.
Cracker Barrel’s slide into a rebranding debacle began with a phone call at 4:30 p.m. on May 16, 2024.
That day, Cracker Barrel’s new CEO, Julie Felss Masino got on the phone with investors and unveiled the details of a “strategic transformation plan” her board of directors had approved. The first of “five pillars” in the plan would be “refining” and “evolving the brand across all touchpoints.”
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CBRL | CRACKER BARREL OLD COUNTRY STORE INC. | 54.27 | -0.14 | -0.25% |
Over the next months, Masino and her board of directors dismissed at least four warnings by a top investor, Sardar Biglari, that the rebranding was “obvious folly,” filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal.
“Cracker Barrel is not a broken brand but it has a broken board,” he wrote, in a scathing seven-page letter to shareholders.
He laid out his criticisms in a 120-page slide-deck presentation with the title, “CRACKER BARREL IS IN CRISIS,” next to the company’s longtime logo of an old man in overalls leaning on a barrel – a logo that Masino would wipe out, unbeknownst to Biglari at the time.
CRACKER BARREL CEO SERVES UP LEFTOVER CORPORATE BRANDING TO UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS
Cracker Barrel unveiled a new text-only logo in August 2025, replacing its iconic man-and-barrel design first introduced in 1977. The new design is drawing swift criticism across the restaurant industry. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
While the dynamics of company executives pursuing politically correct, woke rebranding are now well-documented, a timeline of the last year-and-a-half behind-the-scenes at Cracker Barrel reveals a classic case of corporate myopia, ignoring caution and barreling forward with rigidity.
On the call in May 2024, Masino announced she’d hired a new “leading” branding agency to “refine and strengthen positioning to delight existing and new guests.” The other pillars included “enhancing the menu,” “evolving the store and guest experience,” “winning in digital and off-premise” and “elevating the employee experience.”
Biglari, a San Antonio, Tex., venture capitalist sometimes nicknamed “Big,” didn’t buy the corporate gobbledygook.
Since 2011, he has become one of the company’s largest investors, beside BlackRock Inc., GMT Capital Corp., the Vanguard Group Inc. and AllianceBernstein L.P. He also owns Maxim magazine, which endorsed Donald Trump in 2024, and Steak & Shake, another national restaurant chain. Biglari didn’t respond to requests for comment. On Monday, Cracker Barrel issued a statement that it “could’ve done a better job sharing who we are…” but didn’t indicate it would reverse course.
Other investors also didn’t react well to the news, the company’s share price falling the next day to $48.98.
The son of a former military officer under Shah Reza Pahlavi, Biglari was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1977 and fled to San Antonio with his family after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, dethroning Pahlavi and installing a brutal theocracy. Working first at his family’s Persian carpet store, Biglari built businesses as a teen and then in his 20s created an investment firm, Biglari Holdings, that now trades on the New York Stock Exchange. He has invested in a series of all-American restaurant brands, including Western Sizzlin, Friendly’s, Steak n Shake and Cracker Barrel.
A series of Cracker Barrel boards and senior executives dismissed him as a wayward “activist investor” with a suspect “ultimate agenda,” and his criticism last year fell on deaf ears. Biglari has earned a reputation as a “bully” and “evil genius” with a “Type X” personality, driven by money. Early into his investment in Cracker Barrel, he created a website for his critiques: enhancecrackerbarrel.com. Cracker Barrel responded on a webpage devoted to investors.
The CEO and the board barrelled ahead, hiring a new chief marketing officer, Sarah Moore, in July 2024 from MGM Resorts International, doubling down on expensive store remodelings and “refreshes.”
Its 2024 annual report, released last September, included a “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” section, featuring its seven “Business Resource Groups” for promoting “diverse members,” Black leaders, “Hispanic and Latino culture,” “LGBTQ+ Awareness,” military veterans and women leaders.
Hauntingly, in the report, executives warned that “failure to achieve or sustain” its “strategic transformation plan” with the rebranding “could adversely affect our results.” They also noted, “Unfavorable publicity could harm our business,” as could “activist shareholders,” like Biglari.
By Oct. 8, 2024, Biglari had had enough. In his blistering seven-page letter to shareholders, he warned them about the board’s “obvious folly,” greenlighting Masino and “her new transformation plan.” He criticized the board’s alleged dysfunction and mismanagement.
“Cracker Barrel is in perilous times,” he wrote.
He laid out stark numbers. In 2011, Cracker Barrel reported $167 million in operating income on revenues of $2.4 billion. By 2023, after $1.4 billion in cumulative capital expenditures, operating income had fallen to $121 million, even as revenues climbed past $3.4 billion.
“…the problem lies not in the seating but in getting more people to sit in it,” he warned, continuing, “We do not believe changing the furniture and altering the décor are going to change the Company’s trajectory or solve the Company’s underlying problem of declining traffic.”
CRACKER BARREL DISMISSES CRITICS AS ‘VOCAL MINORITY’ WHILE RIVAL RESTAURANT ADDS TO BACKLASH
CEO Julie Felss Masino announced a sweeping “strategic transformation plan” in May 2024, sparking investor backlash. Venture capitalist Sardar Biglari warned shareholders in October 2024 that Cracker Barrel’s rebranding was “obvious folly.” (Photo by GREGORY WALTON/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Cracker Barrel, he argued, “is not in dire need of a transformation; it’s in dire need of a turnaround.”
He followed up with his slide deck, warning Cracker Barrel was at a “critical inflection point,” marked by “shareholder value destruction” and a “flawed board” that was “responsible for the current malaise.”
After the CEO and board ignored his October 2024 warnings, Biglari responded with an even sharper two-page critique on Nov. 13, 2024. “If you had $100 in Cracker Barrel stock in January 2019, five years later it is worth about $30. Therefore, there is just $30 to go before the entire investment is lost,” he wrote.
Instead of correcting the company’s course, he alleged, board members circled the wagons around the management team. “They value collegiality over accountability,” he wrote.
He described the “transformation” as a “mistake” of misguided executives falling into a “textbook trap of overspending on cosmetic remodeling.”
He noted, a bit humorously, “The day Cracker Barrel opened,” in 1969, “it was already old — its theme derived from the 1920s. I am concerned that not only will the remodel not work but it could actually damage the brand further.”
He noted: “Let me make my position clear: The company’s $700 million remodel plan will not work!”
Biglari asked shareholders to vote for him and a former Getty Images executive, Milena Alberti-Perez, to replace two board directors, Carl Berquist and Meg Crofton, who he criticized as incompetent.
But on Nov. 21, 2024, shareholders sided with management. Cracker Barrel announced that its 10 recommended nominees had been elected, including CEO Masino.
Management touted the vote as an endorsement of the “transformation” as “the right path to return Cracker Barrel to growth and meaningful value creation for all shareholders.”
But the market told another story, with the company’s stock value falling again.
Fast forward to August 2025. Cracker Barrel’s new look hit the public. Out went the iconic man-and-barrel logo that the chain had used since 1977. In came a text-only design and millions of dollars of in-store “modernization.”
The backlash was swift. Investor Chris Wunder, CEO of Leap Brands, an executive recruiting company with expertise in the restaurant industry, compared the rebranding to “taking a vintage Chevy and installing clown rims and a neon paint job.” He said flatly: “Maybe we should have let Sardar Biglari and Biglari Holdings Inc. take over.”
CRACKER BARREL FACES CUSTOMER CRITICISM AFTER DITCHING ICONIC 48-YEAR-OLD LOGO FOR NEW DESIGN
Cracker Barrel’s stock dropped after the rollout of its rebranding in 2025, echoing investor warnings of “value destruction.” Critics say Cracker Barrel’s modernized look stripped away the company’s heritage, long tied to its rustic logo and décor. (Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The stock reacted just as Biglari had warned: dropping again.
“The narrative seems clear enough,” said Scott Johnston, a former Wall Street financier and author of a new novel, “All the Good People,” about a board more focused on collegiality than accountability. “This is a company that felt compelled to atone for past sins,” when it fired gay employees in 1991, before quickly reversing its policies. “In the process, it went overboard. With their eye off the ball, the company suffered, and they are using the problems they themselves created as the pretext to radically alter the brand, a play that looks doomed from the start.”
Now, Biglari’s warnings read like prophecy.
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Last week, Biglari’s other restaurant brand, Steak n Shake, piled on with an X post mimicking the new Cracker Barrel brand with a blunt message: “Fire the CEO.”
Finally, Biglari had an audience.
