I've been watching the Cracker Barrel brouhaha with some amusement. Not that it concerns me directly: Despite having lived here for 40 years, I haven't developed a taste for Southern cooking. Except for hush puppies, fried green tomatoes, pulled pork, and Key lime pie, oh my! Unlike several of my friends, I almost never eat at Cracker Barrel. Not that that hurts the company any: Another reason I don't go there is that they're so crowded and the wait is too dang long. So I can't imagine why their CEO decided the restaurant needed to be de-Southerned. Don't mess with success.
As the Coca-Cola Company learned 40 years ago, when they decided to change the formula of their iconic product. New Coke was an instant failure, and so was New Cracker Barrel.
Which leads me to the following speculation: Did Cracker Barrel's CEO wake up one morning and ask herself, What can we do to spruce up our bottom line? How can we make more people aware of our restaurants?" And did a sly smile spread over her face as she realized the value of offending people? It's risky—that strategy bit Bud Light rather badly—but if you do it right, you can generate a big storm, make your regular clientele remember why they love your product, and get people talking about you who had never even walked across your threshold. If the reaction to your changes is bad, you can admit your mistake and backtrack—if you do it quickly enough, people will forgive you, and may even have a greater appreciation for something they had taken for granted. And if nobody really cares about your changes, you can congratulate yourself on moving the company in the direction you want to go.
People are calling those who promoted the Cracker Barrel change idiots, or worse. But I wonder. It may turn out to have been a smart move, as long as they can convince their loyal and enthusiastic customers that they've learned their lesson and didn't really mean to insult them, their tastes, their traditions, and their ancestors.
One of my students at Oswego, many years ago, had previously worked in marketing. She told me an interesting back-story about the New Coke fiasco. Apparently Coke decided that it wanted to lure Pepsi drinkers to switch to Coke. So they developed a new formula they tried out on a large sample of soda drinkers. The sample overwhelmingly preferred the New Coke. But the sample had been intentionally chosen to be Pepsi fans. So the Pepsi fans preferred the New Coke. But they neglected to ask their loyal Coke fans!
