297
TIL that soda crackers were shipped in barrels, and that's where the name of the store came from
(www.tastingtable.com)
/c/hailcorporate
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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My headcanon is still that the guy in the pic is white, and would always sit outside the store leaned over a barrel, and everybody knew the store by seeing that guy and the barrel.
Tangentially related memory: In the early nineties, my grandparents took my sister and me to their favorite Cracker Barrel (and we went to a lot of Cracker Barrels with them), somewhere in or around Pennsylvania.
It was more or less the same, notably bigger, and right when you walked in, there was a big, old busted barrel, with a plaque that claimed this to be the cracker barrel for which the chain was named. It had several broken planks, and if you looked inside, you could see chewed-open boxes of crackers... And as soon as you looked, a mouse would zip out of the cracker box so fast it'd make you jump, and everybody in the gift shop would laugh their asses off.
Then they let you in on the joke, and the cashier showed you they press a button behind the counter that triggers the mechanical mouse, and you join the in-group of people in the gift shop waiting for the next unsuspecting victim to walk through the front door.
The chewed open boxes should have been a big clue. The barrel was the packaging. I'm also guessing they weren't crawling with maggots, as would be found in a traditional cracker barrel.
Also, Cracker Barrel was founded in 1969. It was always fake nostalgia bait for white people. Who else was pining for the 1800s at that point? People are talking about the logo change erasing their culture or whatever, which I guess is true if your culture is a truckstop restaurant with knickknacks on the walls.
The Wild West was super popular around that time. Little House on the Prairie, was published in the 30's/40's, so the push for more old west stuff 30ish years later (when the adapted the books I to a show) kind of marks the end of the nostalgia driven media from that generation.
I had never thought about it, but cracker barrel being from that 60/70's cowboy craze makes a shitload of sense.
Yea my great grandfather was born around 1930 and he was a really big John Wayne fan
hey, i'll have you know some damn good food comes out of truck stops. best worst bbq chain i know started in one. best tacos next town over are served at one.
The PR for Cracker Barrel is off the hooks as of lately. Previously I had no idea what Cracker Barrel was and I had never heard of it. But now... I still have no idea what it is, but I have heard of it.
Gift shop/restaurant with a country-ish theme. Like the restaurants have big wooden porches with big rocking chairs, if that tells you anything about the vibe.
Literally never seen a cracker barrel store in my life. Hope they go out of business before I get the chance, they sound like a shitty corporate restaurant.
The restaurant has a gift shop. I haven't been in a very long time but it was always overpriced Americana crap made in China. And it's not like a counter you can buy a tshirt at, it's a whole ass store attached to the restaurant. They're ultra proud of that bullshit.
Fun fact: most Cracker Barrel restaurants are built just off an interstate exit. They use GIS for planning and hope to catch travelers as they stop for gas and food.
McDonalds are built on intersections to discourage people from walking in.
The idea was so only car owners would visit and discourage people who didn't own cars.
The franchise owners sometimes go the trouble of getting on councils and closing down roads and pedestrian crossings to discourage pedestrian access.
Why would they prefer drivers? The greater portion of drivers, the more they have to spend on car infrastructure, and even then there is a pretty limited max throughput
Sorry, isn't that the plan for most food joints? I mean I understand they're at other locations, but just off exits is big for this reason.
Most food joints just go for market saturation. Cracker Barrel specifically targets travelers.
That's my main memory of Cracker Barrel. It was a place we'd sometimes stop and eat at when I was a kid during the family road trips. In that sense, I have some good memories associated with them, but I'm not particularly nostalgic for the brand and I've not been to one in years.
It's also where the phrase "bottom of the barrel" came from - by the time you reached that, they got nasty!
I think it refers to salted herrings, which were transported in barrels.
I used to watch The Food that Built America quite a bit and I could swear it was mentioned in the Nabisco/cracker episode. The reality is, there were probably quite a few foods in barrels, few of which would have been good by the time you reach the bottom.
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