Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, the chain of southern style restaurants with a gift shop that controls motorways throughout America, has received a makeover. Their logo has lost the slogan “Old Country Store”, as well as the iconic man in a chair that lets his arm rest on a barrel in favor of the words Cracker Barrel only in text. Inside, per protection videos of renovated locations, the dark nostalgic feeling has disappeared with a sterile renovation. The trashes have gone of quirky kitsch from the past of something that you might see in a traditional store in the suburbs.
Although the CEO of the company said that the first reaction to these changes was positive, the judgment on social media was very the opposite. The new look removes the old -fashioned charm and character that had been central for decades in the identity of the brand.
Cracker Barrel is only the newest in a series of companies, including Jaguar, more recent and even Coca-Cola in the mid-1980s with their new cola rollout, to violate the critical principle to ensure that you do not alienate your loyal customer base.
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I wear a lot of hats in business and have more than 20 years of experience as an advocate for loyal customers and customers in business, work in an outsourced CCO function (Chief Customer Officer) and share my own customer loyalty models through speeches and consult with both the largest companies in the world as a variety of small and medium companies. And I am firmly convinced that one of the most important assets of a company is not on its balance: the loyal customers of the company.
The iconic cracker -vessel -look leaves. File: People leave a Cracker Vat Old Land Shop Restaurant on April 12, 2002, in Naperville, IL. (Tim Boyle/Getty images)
Loyal customers are easier to sell more, both in the frequency of purchases and Upsells, because they already love your company and have often given you permission to communicate with them and build a relationship. They are also excellent proponents for generating new companies through their own advertisements -efforts -mouth -to -mouth advertising, messages on social media and more.
Although it is a challenge for companies to constantly grow, and listed companies are even more under pressure to do this, mathematical growth becomes more difficult if you lose customers from your most important customer base.
Cracker Barrel’s new text-all-logo is ‘how to destroy a brand’, critics claim
If you make your customers believe that you do not care about them and their relationship with your brand and company, it will be very difficult for you to be successful in your company. This is the grim reality that many companies that have searched for new customers have recently had to deal with. It is great to reach new customers, but you have to do it carefully and in a way that does not burn goodwill at the same time with your existing customers.
New customers should never be treated better or get more weight than existing, loyal customers.
In my own social media post that has reserved a video of a Cracker Barrel Dining Room, I received thousands of interactions. Among the majority of the comments of old customers who expressed their displeasure about the changes, another comment was noticed. The poster said, “I don’t eat there, but it looks nice.”
And that is the core of the problem. The poster is not a customer and is probably not a customer based on the comment. The search for her approval is therefore not a profit for income -enhancing profit for the company. Perhaps it gets a bit roe (return on ego) points for the marketing team, but it does not get ROI (Return on Investment) for shareholders.
Cracker Barrel reveals new simplified logo: ‘Our story has not changed’
For Cracker Barrel, the losing character in a time when corporatization makes everything around us boring and soulless, feels like something nice from the past is being killed. And for a brand that is based on nostalgia – from their design to their nostalgic candy and were in their adjacent store – it is not logical.
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I am a long -term cracker barrel patron. I stop in when I’m on the road. And as an old customer, as well as business advisor and executive, I can tell you that the Cracker Barrel logo was not their problem.
Part of the cracker Vat Mystique was the unique decor. File: seeing customers dining in a cracker barrel old land in the store in Stuart, Florida. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
My last stop was on a road trip in June. I noticed that I hadn’t been there for a while before, because I hadn’t been on the road much. And at a time when convenience is part of the comparison and Doordash has younger generations, it is more difficult to get contact points with a brand, even if you want them. This is a much greater strategic endeavor that Cracker Barrel should think about.
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My other problem was the menu. They had pulled out my favorite item and their Hashbrown casserole tasted off – the food was generally not as fresh as I had experienced in the past. In my social media post there have been different comments in recent years about a decrease in food quality. Making the menu and food quality Rock-Solid is crucial for a restaurant, especially when consumers try to stretch their dollars.
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Cracker Barrel is not the first and will certainly not be the last company that falls into the fall to think that all change is good. Companies must put their customer voices on the table, which can be achieved with a CCO whose task it is to know the customers well and to argue for them within the company or other loyalty specialist.
Loyalty is difficult to build and easy to lose. Companies always want to attract new customers, but that is not effective if relationships with existing customers are not fed at the same time.
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