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Cracker Barrel reported earnings Wednesday for the first time since the company ignited a cultural firestorm by revealing a modern rebrand of its old-timey logo in August. Julie Masino, the restaurant chain’s CEO, referenced the ordeal repeatedly in Wednesdays earnings call, noting that Cracker Barrel is working to regain its footing as it grapples with declining foot traffic from the rebranding controversy. The feedback we’ve received from our guests in recent weeks on our brand refresh and store remodel has shown us just how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel, Masino said on the call. We thank our guests for sharing their voices and love for the brand and telling us when we’ve misstepped. Cracker Barrel plans to tread carefully for future changes and will introduce a new front porch feedback plan to check in with its customers more often. Masino said that while traffic is down since 8/19the day of the infamous rebrandloyalty signups are soaring. Impact from the backlash expected Cracker Barrel expects to see the fallout from the August controversy show up in its next quarter results. The company revised its expected 2026 fiscal year revenue down from previous estimates, from $3.5 billion to $3.45 billion, noting that it anticipates a 7% decline in store traffic. The company said that its over-55 customer base has remained mostly consistent, but that it has seen declining traffic in younger cohorts, particularly in the Southeast. Cracker Barrel on Wednesday reported $868 million in revenue in the quarter that ended on August 1, prior to its logo fiasco. Same-store restaurant sales were up 5.4% from a year ago, with retail sales dipping by around 1%. While the company bested revenue estimates of $855 million, it fell short on earnings per share. Shares of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (Nasdaq: CBRL) dropped after the earnings report and were down about 7.6% in premarket trading Thursday as of this writing. Not yet over the barrel Designed to modernize a drab brand and bring in new audiences, Cracker Barrels $700 million marketing overhaul instead became a lightning rod among traditionalists who denounced the cleaner logo and rejected updates to make its cluttered dining spaces brighter and more welcoming. Among the offenses, the restaurant even tweaked the language on the iconic peg game that customers play while they wait for their food, removing the classic text that declares a poor player an “EG-NO-RA-MOOSE. Conservatives slammed Cracker Barrels planned update as woke and soulless and framed it as cultural capitulation, a pushback that dented the companys value by $100 million. The backlash escalated all the way to the president of the United States, who waded into the furor to decry the changes. Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before, President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that if the company played its cards right it would have a billion dollars in free publicity. On X, Trumps deputy White House chief of staff said that he had spoken with the companys leadership, which thanked Trump for expressing his opinion of the rebrand. Shortly after Trump weighed in, Cracker Barrel said it would roll back the update, restoring its 1977 logo featuring the old timer known as Uncle Herschel and vowing to reverse aesthetic updates at a handful of its 660 locations. We want longtime fans and new guests to experience the full story of the people, places, and food that make Cracker Barrel so special, Masino said on the call. That’s why our team pivoted quickly, switched back to our old timer logo, and has already begun executing new marketing, advertising, and social media initiatives, leaning into uncle Hershel and the nostalgia around the brand. The incident may ultimately prove to be a win for Cracker Barrel, a brand thats more accustomed to being a background feature in Americas endless landscape of mediocre chain eateries than a topic of national conversation. The rebrand flopped spectacularly, but it sparked a massive outpouring of nostalgia for the corporate chain in the process. More than a month later, were still talking about Cracker Barrel.
Category:
E-Commerce
For a tiny device that clips onto your key ring, the Kodak Charmera makes an oversize impression. At least to me. The newest compact digital camera believes it is a 1980s Kodak Fling disposable camera, which itself was like a 120 Ektachrome film box with a lens and a viewfinder. It looks the part so well that it feels like a portal to my childhood. I imagine it smells of my dads cigarettes, just by looking at it. For most of the people from this century who are attempting to buy the Charmera, however, its design will be more than a way to quench the thirst for a faux past they never had. Kodaks newest camera is a perfect remedy to partly overcome the phone ban in schools that is taking place all over the worldfrom California and Madrid to Beijing and Sydney. Kodak may have introduced what might be 2025s best digital gadget for . . . you know, for kids. With no screens, no internet, no apps, and no notification tsunamis, the Charmera only lets you point and shoot. You can review each shot in a postage-stamp-size 0.8-inch LCD on its back, sure, but not many people will be using the display for that. Its simply too tiny to see any detail clearly. [Photo: Kodak] The real photo “developing” and editing must happen anywhere you can access a device with a USB-C port and a big screen, suck all the photos off the cameras virtual film, and review them. This is, I believe, something positive for the user experience, too. If you have to wait a few hours to get your image on a screen big enough to appreciate its value, your Instagramming, TikTokking, and WhatsApping will logically get much better. Time makes you see things from a different perspective, trust me. Plus, no Dean Ed Rooney trying to spoil your Bueller time. A bare-bones model Inside its 2.3-by-1-by-0.8-inch box sits a 1/4-inch CMOS sensor recording 1.6 effective megapixels at 1440-by-1080 pixels, paired with a fixed-focus 35-millimeter f/2.4 plastic lens and a built-in flash unit. The way you use it is by putting your eye to its optical viewfinder. The camera shoots JPEG photos and video at 30 frames per second, stores two still photos internally (I was hoping for 24, like the Fling), and accepts microSD cards from 1 GB to 128 GB for virtually unlimited shots. A 200 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery, charged via USB-C, powers the whole rig, and a key chain clip turns it into a bag charm. Kodak leans even harder into nostalgia with date stamps, four vintage Kodak frames, and seven pixel-art filters. But the final twist that may turn this into a bestseller is the blind-box distribution. You buy the box without knowing which of its seven retro designs you will get (plus a transparent secret edition that has 1 in 48 odds). Each box sells for $30 per mystery box. You can also buy a six-pack guaranteed to include all standard designs (minus the secret design) for $180. No matter what, you will have to buy a lot more to get the transparent model. [Photo: Kodak] No phone, no problem The device cant arrive at a better time. Despite wide usage among young people and kids, smartphones are increasingly being viewed as noxious, sometimes lethal devices for young people. Often, they are channels that throttle up bullying. Most of the time, they just suck your brain and make kids dumber (adults, too). Thats why phones are vanishing from schools worldwide at a high pace. Florida banned them in classrooms in 2023, and by 2025, 35 states plus Washington, D.C., have restricted student phone usemore than a dozen imposing full bell-to-bell bans to curb plummeting test scores and mental health crises. New Yorks statewide ban for 202526 and Californias 2026 mandate point to a broader crackdown. Europe has pushed even further. Madrid barred personal digital devices for 550,000 preschool and primary students this year, imposing age-based screen limits from zero hours for toddlers to two hours weekly for 12-year-olds. That doesn’t mean phones are allowed then. Rather, it refers to two hours a week of screens like tablets for educational use. France piloted a “digital pause” in 180 middle schools before expanding nationwide in 2025. The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Hungary enacted their own bas, and China, the earliest mover in 2021, tightened its rules again in 2023. This year, Chinese officials will further restrict screen and social media usage for kids to stop addiction and the increase of a common new dangerous syndrome that some doctors I know call You are really getting so dumb with that phone of yours, Steve. Sure, there are helicopter parents worried about emergency access (even while they grew up with no cellphones themselves and apparently survived), but most normal people are happy about the expanding bans. I know that almost all my fellow school parents are ecstatic about it. Many students dont like it either, of course. (Greek students protested after 6,000 suspensions.) And experts warn that bans alone dont solve social media addiction. But facts are hard to ignore: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) says that phones cost students 20 minutes of focus per distraction, reinforcing policymakers resolve. The stats also tie increasing phone usage to an increase in bullying. (And vice versa: This study shows that banning phones decreased bullying). Im sure that some will be able to find nefarious usages for the Kodak Charmera. Or some kids will get obsessed with retro photography. But it sure beats the alternative. [Photo: Kodak] The Kodak Charmera offers a holiday shopping snapshot The Charmera is already sold out everywhere. Maybe Reto Production Ltd.the global licensee for the Kodak brand responsible for the Charmera and other retro camera modelshas limited access on purpose to make it a coveted product in the social sphere. Perhaps they couldnt anticipate such a strong appetite for a tiny, attractive way to capture images anywhere without a cellphone. I asked the company, but it did not respond. It doesnt really matter. At $30, it is the perfect stocking filler. My Spidey sense tells me that it may end up being the hottest thingamajig you will try to buy this holiday season.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s not just youyou really have been seeing a lot more of Gap lately. Over the last few years, the brand has embarked on a broad business turnaround. It hired Richard Dickson, Mattel’s former CEO who turned Barbie into a phenomenon. Then it brought on Zac Posen as its new creative director. It launched an elevated sub-brand, GapStudio, and it’s bringing back nostalgia-driven styles like low-rise jeans. But perhaps more effective than any single business decision has been Gap’s unabashed embrace of collaborations. Again and again, Gap’s partnerships have surprised shoppers by tapping into corners of culture and fashion that expand the audience for the classic American brand. There have been collabs with womens fashion brands Cult Gaia and Dôen (twice), Black design advocacy platform Harlems Fashion Row, luggage company Béis, and cool golf-wear brand Malbon. For people who doubted Gap’s fashion bona fides, these collabs were meant to prove them wrong. Is Gap actually plugged in? Mark Breitbard, the president and CEO of Global Gap Brand, has been trying to answer that question with a resounding yes for the last five years. When Brietbard joined Gap in 2020, he was dealing with a crisis of relevance. “Having been around the business for a long time, I always felt that the brand just needed more, he says. The brand deserved better, and the brand had good creative just dying to get out. Now, dozens of collabs later, a different company has emerged from the cryogenic freezerone that consumers are starting to actually care about. A new era for Gap Step by step, the Gap brand started to carry cachet. That’s really the storymore than one partner, one campaignit’s the story of all of it, says Breitbard, referring to the steady drumbeat of storytelling he and his team are building through its partnerships and marketing campaigns. Relative to the story that a revived Gap is trying to tell, all of this creative is the narrative, he says. And is intrinsic to its aim of restaking our claim as an American icon. [Photo: Courtesy of The Gap] But strong creative requires a solid foundation to work from. In 2020, when Breitbard moved from his role as president and CEO of Banana Republic to join Gap in his current role, the casual-wear brand had nowhere to go but up. In fact, the last time Gap was in the conversation, low-rise jeans were in style (think 2000 to 2010). Breitbard has incredibly broad responsibilities. I lead the Gap brand business. It means everything that you see that is Gap is under my purview, he says. Product, marketing, stores, e-commerce, partnerships, and all the experiences that go along with that, he adds. The Gapaissance is made up of many creative decision-makers, but at the end of the day, Breitbard is the one who makes the final call. When he stepped into the role, he first noticed that the brand needed a cleanup. Gap had a number of problems, starting with relevance, Breitbard recalls of the companys health when he first joined. The business model was broken in some ways. A brief summary of his to-do list: Reduce the Gap’s overstored retail footprint (they closed 350 stores) Reinvent product Cut the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs) Reinvest in quality Multiple rounds of layoffs, all of which took place through 2022 Followed by new creative hires in 2023, including its head of creative, Calvin Leung, and agency partner, Invisible Dynamics. CEO Dickson, credited with Barbies pink tsunami of a comeback during his time as president and COO at Mattel, also joined in 2023. At that point, the company felt established enough to move on from digging itself out and start building up positive momentum. In 2024, Gap tapped Posen to head up its new, higher-price-point sub-brand, GapStudio, itself a relevance play through red carpet and celebrity dressing. Thats also when the collaboration strategy started in earnest. (There were a few early collabs: the ill-fated, 10-year YZY partnership in 2020, which ended in 2022, followed by the more successful Gap x Dapper Dan collab in 2022.) According to Gap, the company rarely engaged in brand partnerships prior to Breitbards onboarding: about 24 collaborations over a span of 40 years, from 1979 to 2019. Since Breitbard joined the company, Gap has launched more than 15 partnerships (about three per yeara five-fold increase over the prior average of about two every three years). By mid-2025, Gap is running six to eight major partnerships per year. [Photo: Courtesy of The Gap] In 2024, Gap started to drop more frequentand surprisingly covetablecollabs, like with Dôen and Cult Gaia. The kind that might cause you to text your friend a link with at least five question marks: “Gap????? The company also began launching classic Gap ads with new talent: Troye Sivan, Tyla, and most recently Katseye, choreographed by Robbie Blue. All of this offers multiple approaches to reinvent its icons, as Breitbard describes it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Robbie Blue (@itsrobbiesworld_) The strategy is meant to reestablish its own core styles and its own brand relevance through affiliation with partners that carry fashion and cultural credibility. We had the business starting to fire in 23 with a lot of the pieces there, he says. Then a combination of all the different moves we’ve been making. We ramped every single one of them upramped up the marketing campaigns, ramped up the collabs, ramped up the storytelling, and got more and more focused. That includes a focused partnerships strategy. According to Breitbard, any new partnership requires a few things: a clear internal understanding of established brand codes (described as rooted in denim and the authentic voice of Americana), value alignment with potential partners, a strong creative team, and a differentiated story and audience. That happens when a story can only be told with that partner, and that the partner can only tell with us, he says. But for Breitbard, it ultimately coms down to a basic relevance formula, which I call the group chat litmus test: Is it new? Is it unexpected? And is it cool? he asks. Relevance and its cousin, authenticity, are brand qualities that are both difficult to define and universally chased. Every brand wants to be part of the cultural conversation, because that ultimately establishes credibility in the eyes of the consumer and creates a wide marketing funnel through which to engage potential customers. Think of it as branding soft power. What unites all of these partnerships is the idea of authenticity and upholding Gaps DNA. We do go through great pains to ensure that the brand codes remain upheld in everything we do, Breitbard says. But having a strong creative team very locked in on who we are allows us to take more risks; it allows us to have interesting partnerships that feel new and unexpected. So that’s it. We rely on great creative talent. [Photo: Courtesy of The Gap] The halo effect Brand relevance leads to brand equity, which leads to sales. Collaborations help establish that: 29% of customers who make a collab purchase are new to the brand, according to Gap. But partnerships also offer a halo effect for its core product: 20% of consumers who made a collab purchase also added a Gap item to their cart, according to the company. And partnerships have also proven important to establishing longtail business leads. Collab customers skew youngerunder age 40. I questioned friends about their current perception of Gap. Ive noticed how Zac Posen has turned the ship. But not until this Katseye ad, have I been interested in actually buying from them, a 33-year-old PR professional based in L.A. told me. Froth, says a 35-year-old Australian consultant based in New York. I loved the [Katseye] ad and walked into a Gap store for the first time in my life. I think its getting cooler again, and they have trendier things in store, a 39-year-old New York-based fashion designer told me. Ive bought a few things recently. According to Breitbard, no one partnership best captures the resurgent era of Gap. Rather, its the strategy as a whole. Great creative begets great creative in the same way with talent and bringing more talent, he says of his team and its recent output. Reflecting on the recent partnerships and distinct campaigns, he says: All of this creative is the narrative. Right now, the creative is setting the paceand its adding up to a comeback no one saw coming.
Category:
E-Commerce
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