Comment by Stratoscope

Comment by Stratoscope 5 days ago

43 replies

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I hope they go Full Cracker Barrel on this:

1. Original logo has country charm and soul.

2. Replaced with a modern soulless logo.

3. Customer outrage!

4. Company (or open source project) comes to its senses and returns to old logo.

https://media.nbcboston.com/2025/08/cracker-barrel-split.jpg

(n.b. The Cracker Barrel Rebellion is sometimes associated with MAGA. I am very far from that, but I have to respect when people of any political stripe get something right.)

b00ty4breakfast 4 days ago

the funny thing about the Cracker Barrel brouhaha is that the new one still looked like something you'd find on a pack of matches from a hotel bar in the 70s.

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  • janc_ 3 days ago

    It looked like Cracker Barrel's own logo in the 1960s/1970 IIRC.

    Reply View 0 replies
UltraSane 5 days ago

The Cracker Barrel "controversy" seems to have largely been fueled by bots.

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  • eatkd 5 days ago

    Any source for that?

    Reply View 33 replies
    • toomuchtodo 5 days ago

      https://www.nrn.com/casual-dining/cracker-barrel-s-logo-cont...

      https://www.wsj.com/articles/bot-networks-are-helping-drag-c...

      Reply View 32 replies
      • forgotoldacc 4 days ago

        The vast majority of Twitter posts are by bots, so 44.5% seems like a higher proportion of humans than usual. The Cracker Barrel thing was a hot topic amongst people I know for a good 48 hours.

        It's more interesting to me how, without fail, a comment always pops in at the mention of Cracker Barrel to say "those were bots, fellow human."

        Reply View 1 reply
        • bmicraft 4 days ago

          If the "fueled by bots" comment wasn't here already I'd have written it.

          Reply View 0 replies
      • hajile 4 days ago

        Did anyone short Cracker Barrel stock? If not, I have a hard time seeing why bots would have any interest in investing the time/money. There also didn't seem to be any political clout being gained by the complaints.

        More real-world is that I know tons of friends/relatives in the South and I don't know of even ONE that liked the redesign.

        Reply View 28 replies
      • mh- 4 days ago

        > According to research obtained by the Wall Street Journal from PeakMetrics, 44.5% of X posts about Cracker Barrel on Aug. 20 (when the new logo began to go viral), were posted by “bots or likely bots,” rising to 49% at the peak of the controversy.

        I wonder how much this differs from the percentage for any trending topic on X?

        Reply View 0 replies
swyx 4 days ago

ah, the New Coke Gambit

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  • acomjean 4 days ago

    Ah New Coke… Oddly I liked new coke better. My most 80s possession is a new coke can with max headroom on it.

    They had both new and “classic” for a while co existing.

    Reply View 3 replies
    • jkaplowitz 4 days ago

      > Oddly I liked new coke better.

      Fun fact: so did most focus groups and (I think?) blind taste tests when it was just presented as a new drink, but they tended to be horrified by the idea of it actually replacing classic Coke. The problem with that switch was mostly psychological / cultural, not chemical.

      Also, Diet Coke, which remains quite popular, is still based on the New Coke formula except with the sweetener swapped out. The no-calorie version of classic Coke is Coke Zero. The Coca-Cola Company has been working to increase Coke Zero's popularity, and it is now much more popular than it used to be, but I think Diet Coke continues to be more popular than Coke Zero even now.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • cyphar 4 days ago

        > The Coca-Cola Company has been working to increase Coke Zero's popularity, and it is now much more popular than it used to be, but I think Diet Coke continues to be more popular than Coke Zero even now.

        This might be a per-country thing -- Coke Zero has always been more popular in Australia ever since it came out (it can be hard to find Diet Coke in vending machines and for single-bottle sales here). Of course, Coke (and Pepsi) can taste different in different countries but I would say the Aussie one tastes pretty similar to the American one.

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