I don’t eat at Cracker Barrel. It’s not a function of its “down home” motif. The first time I remember going to one of the restaurants was during one of the Olin Family reunion weekends in Binghamton about 25 years ago. It’s possible that the number of diners overwhelmed the staff because the service was terrible.
The last time was perhaps a decade ago in East Greenbush, near Albany. (Mark Evanier noted that “the Cracker Barrels in the state of New York are in Binghamton, Cicero, Clifton Park, East Greenbush, Fishkill, Horseheads, Rochester, Watertown, and Williamsville. Again, my life has never taken me to any of these cities, and I have no idea where they are.”)
Anyway, the cooking area was arranged so the server couldn’t even suggest how my daughter, who has tree nut and peanut allergies, could have something from the griddle. We found something she could eat, but we never went back.
It was not the only time I left places that seemed incapable of taking the daughter’s allergies seriously. We ended up walking out of an Applebee’s in southern Pennsylvania. By comparison, Friendly’s restaurants—alas, no longer in Albany County—were great regarding allergens.
Here’s a sad truth: I felt safer taking her to McDonald’s or Wendy’s than some out-of-the-way diner when she would tell them about her allergies, and they seemed unresponsive to what was being said.
What’s it called again?
Here’s the weird thing about Cracker Barrel: until this controversy, I could never remember the place’s name. Ask my wife or daughter, and I’d say, “You know, the place with the yellow sign.”
That said, my wife was grousing about a certain Orange man fussing about this. But I noted that it was Steak ‘n Shake that first complained. Their map suggests they are located from Ohio to Texas to Florida. They claimed “Cracker Barrel’s goal with its switch-up was to ‘delete the personality altogether’ by removing the ‘old-timer’ from the signage.”
I just discovered that the man’s name is Uncle Herschel. Perhaps people were concerned that a fictional character would be unemployed. Whew! We dodged that bullet.
So it’s a “heritage” thing, whatever that means. Except that “Cracker Barrel has always been a simulacrum of rural life, a corporate behemoth masquerading as a mom-and-pop lunch counter,” per David A. Graham in The Atlantic. “No one should confuse a bland interstate chain with a real slice of Americana.” But it wants to show its MAGA bona fides by ditching the webpage “boasting its support for the LGBTQ+ community.”
Kelly is right: the controversy shows we are becoming a stupider nation.
I don’t wanna be right, but here we are….