Tag: culture opinion

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck is the latest influencer to weigh in on the Cracker Barrel logo controversy. He described the company’s logo makeover as going from “old American nostalgia” to something “cold, dead, lifeless and modern.” In his 15-minute video, Starbuck does a brutal takedown of the company’s history, explaining how over the years it has embraced “wokeness.”

Starbuck told his followers that while the Cracker Barrel brand is often associated with American tradition, the company is “infested with left-wing activists who are more interested in safe spaces, pronouns, and virtue signaling than they are in their customers.”

In his video, Starbuck highlights Cracker Barrel’s support for LGBTQ+ organizations and events, such as Nashville Pride, River City Pride and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

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He also noted that the company displayed rocking chairs with rainbow colors and LGBTQ+ insignia. The company even went so far as to place one in its Tennessee corporate office. Rocking chairs are practically synonymous with Cracker Barrel. Rocking chairs are practically synonymous with Cracker Barrel, with the restaurant’s long porches lined with them at locations nationwide.

“The fact that it’s located there is important to this story because what’s happened here is a microcosm of the parasitic operating procedure of left-wing activists,” Starbuck said. “They don’t just wanna force their soulless, godless, hedonistic vision of the future onto blue hellscapes that their party controls. 

“No, it’s much more important to them that they shove it down into your towns, into your kids’ schools, and into your way of life. So, sticking a pro-trans rocking chair into their headquarters in a predominantly conservative town is exactly the type of thing they revel in doing.”

Starbuck then pointed to the company’s involvement with HRC and participation in the Out and Equal Workplace Summit. For the Out and Equal conference, Cracker Barrel made rocking chairs in every color of the rainbow, representing the LGBTQ+ flag. Out and Equal even gave Cracker Barrel an award for having 2018’s top LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (ERG).

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The restaurant chain previously participated in HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, which measures “corporate policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer employees,” according to the organization’s website. A company’s score on the index is determined by how inclusive HRC judged it to be toward LGBTQ+ employees.

Cracker Barrel told Fox News Digital on Friday that it “has not participated in the Human Rights Campaign Index or had any affiliation with HRC in several years.”

Two Cracker Barrel employees are called out by name in Starbuck’s video, Steve Smotherman and Rachel CampBell. 

Smotherman was the head of management training and development at Cracker Barrel for 15 years, Starbuck asserted, showing a screenshot that appeared to be from LinkedIn. Smotherman, who eventually left Cracker Barrel for Out and Equal, serves on HRC’s Business Advisory Council in Washington, D.C. 

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Starbuck describes Smotherman as “the archetype activist employee that fueled the rise of DEI in corporate America.” He also slammed CampBell, a manager of training and development at Cracker Barrel, for publicly expressing excitement over the company’s rainbow pride rocking chairs.

“And it’s important to note all of this because these types of employees play a critical role in turning companies away from the values of their customers and moving the companies toward wokeness,” Starbuck said.

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Gilbert Dávila, a member of Cracker Barrel’s board of directors, was also referenced in Starbuck’s video. Dávila, who joined Cracker Barrel’s board in 2020, has worked at several major companies, including Disney, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. He’s also the co-CEO of DMI Consulting, which looks to “infuse cultural relevance and creativity into every solution.”  Starbuck asserted that Dávila, and others like him, are responsible for the “woke advertising push” seen over the last few years.

In the end, Starbuck emphasizes that the controversy around Cracker Barrel’s logo change is about more than the removal of a man in his chair leaning on a barrel.

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“It’s very, very important to understand that the Cracker Barrel story is not about a logo. It’s not at all about a logo, it is about a country, it is our heritage, and it is a culture. It’s about a power structure built to tell us that we are somehow backwards, embarrassing or bigoted,” Starbuck said.

“A conservative can’t give their money to Cracker Barrel. A Christian cannot give their money to Cracker Barrel, and so we won’t,” he added.

As Starbuck sees it, the Cracker Barrel debacle is a win-win for conservatives, saying that the company will either have to double down and lose customers or revert back to its 1977 logo to retain its customer base.

Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.

Cracker Barrel did not respond Fox News Digital’s request for comment in time for publication.