Episode Details

Story of the Week (DR):

The Cracker Barrel BS

Cracker Barrel scraps new logo design, keeps 'Old Timer' after listening to customers

Restaurant chain's stock price sank following removal of 'Uncle Herschel' from branding

Uncle Herschel wasn’t just a marketing creation, he was a real person. Born Herschel McCartney, he was the younger brother of Cracker Barrel founder Dan Evins’ mother and served as an early goodwill ambassador for the brand. A salesman for Martha White Flour Company for over three decades, Herschel traveled through rural America, building relationships in small-town general stores — the very kinds of places that inspired Cracker Barrel’s original design and ethos.

When Cracker Barrel introduced its iconic logo in 1969, the old-timer sitting beside the barrel was long thought by fans to be based on Herschel himself, though the company later clarified that this wasn’t the case.

In 2004, the Justice Department (during the George W. Bush administration) sued the chain for discriminating against Black customers. In 2006, they settled a lawsuit involving three of their Illinois restaurants for “discriminatory practices, racially charged language, and inappropriate touching.”

Cracker Barrel’s inconvenient fact: all the customers who loved its old logo had stopped going to the restaurant

Founder Dan Evins

His tone was considerably harsher when it came to defending a January 1991 directive to all the company’s restaurants to fire employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values.” Mr. Evins’s explanation for the edict was that gay people made customers in rural areas uncomfortable. As many as 16 openly or suspected gay employees were promptly fired.

“They actually put a policy like this in writing, which was, and still is, shocking,” David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

The New York City Employees Retirement System, which owned more than $6 million of Cracker Barrel shares, led other stock owners in using their votes and other legal means to organize resistance. In March 1991, Mr. Evins apologized and said the policy had been rescinded. But New York and its allies fought until 58 percent of the shareholders in 2002 persuaded Cracker Barrel’s board to vote unanimously to explicitly forbid antigay discrimination in its equal employment policy.

In July 2001, shareholders replaced Evins as CEO with Michael A. Woodhouse, who at the time was serving as the company's chief operating officer. Evins maintained his position as chairman of the board.

Prior to founding the company, Dan worked for Consolidated Oil, a company founded by his grandfather.